REAL ESTATE : County Real Estate to Keep Appreciating, Money Magazine Says

There has been a lot of hand-wringing in the past year over the “declining” price of homes in Orange County.

It is true that many people who bought at the height of the market of 1988-89 haven’t seen much appreciation. And some who have bought homes in the last year have even seen values decline as cash-strapped builders offered discount deals to later buyers.

(Remember when prices were jumping 20% or more a year and buyers duked it out for places in line to get on a waiting list for the privilege of just talking to an agent about buying a home?)

But industry experts continue to say that prices overall still are making profits for people when they sell their homes. And prices will keep going up in the future, they say.

Now comes Money magazine to validate that claim in its May issue.

In its ranking of projected housing price appreciation for the next two years, the Money survey places Anaheim third on a list of 50 major cities. A $240,900 home in Anaheim (Money’s median for the area) is expected to appreciate by 3.9% over the next two years, the magazine says.

Chicago topped the list with a 5.2% appreciation rate from the current median of $123,800, followed by Oklahoma City, where prices are expected to climb 5.1% from a median of $55,500.

Near the bottom of the list were San Diego, where the median of $186,300 is expected to depreciate by 1.2%, and Riverside, where the current $132,600 median will fall by 2.3%, according to Money’s survey.

Los Angeles, with a $212,500 median, is expected to see a minuscule 0.5% appreciation rate through May, 1993.