Housing Booming in Inland Empire

Want to buy a house? Try the Inland Empire.

That’s where everyone seems to be looking -- and buying. Although parts of Southern California’s housing market might be losing some sizzle, the Inland Empire continues to boom.

In July, nearly one-third of the roughly 33,000 homes purchased in Southern California were in Riverside and San Bernardino counties, a record, according to DataQuick Information Systems, a La Jolla firm that compiles monthly housing statistics.

The median price in Riverside County was $327,000, topping the median in San Bernardino County, a relative bargain at $257,000. Both were dwarfed by the median for Southern California. That was $402,000 in July, down from $406,000 in June.

The Inland Empire is “the only affordable market,” said Lonnie Maples, a Riverside-area real estate agent since 1978. “Where else are you going to go?”

Probably not to Orange or Ventura counties. Despite a cooling-off from June, they remain the region’s most expensive places to buy a home -- although fewer houses were sold in July than a year earlier.

In Orange County, 4,193 houses closed escrow in July, compared with 4,749 in June and 5,046 in July 2003. The median price, the point at which half of the houses in the county sold for more, half for less, was $525,000, down from $540,000 in June, although well above $428,000 last July.

The month-to-month decline was the biggest this year, said John Karevoll, DataQuick’s chief analyst.

Ventura County’s sales fell to 1,281 in July from 1,466 in June and 1,527 a year earlier. The median price climbed to $502,000, compared with $500,000 in June and $403,000 a year earlier.

In Los Angeles County, the median price was $406,000 in July, up 23.8% year over year. Because of the county’s size and housing diversity, the market “takes a long time to turn and change direction,” Karevoll said.

The decline in sales in counties outside the Inland Empire could lead some to wonder whether this is “the long-awaited turn in the market that people talk about with great drama,” Karevoll said. “Is this the beginning of the end?”

The answer, according to him, is no. July’s numbers indicate that an “unsustainably strong” market is normalizing, Karevoll said. “There’s no indication this is the start of the downturn in the market.”

Esmael Adibi, director of the A. Gary Anderson Center for Economic Research at Chapman University, disagreed. He thinks the days of appreciation above 20% are over, and predicted that the rate in much of the region would begin to fall.

There will be “slow erosion of prices,” he said, due in part to mortgage rates, which are expected to nudge upward.

“Everyone’s like, ‘Everything’s been so good for so long,’ ” said Jaira Kapp, an agent with Troop Real Estate in Thousand Oaks. “There’s fear in people’s minds that it’s not going to last.”

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Higher prices

Median prices for new and resold homes, by county

*--* % change Median price (in thousands) from County 7/03 5/04 6/04 7/04 year ago San Berdo. $196 $236 $246 $257 +31.1% Riverside $254 $317 $319 $327 +28.7% Ventura $403 $492 $500 $502 +24.6% Los Angeles $328 $394 $414 $406 +23.8% San Diego $382 $454 $464 $472 +23.6% Orange $428 $543 $540 $525 +22.7% So. Cal. $328 $396 $406 $402 +22.6%

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Source: DataQuick Information Systems