Valley Home Prices Drop 3% in August

San Fernando Valley home values dipped nearly 3% from July to August, a drop industry analysts blamed on a traditional summer slowdown. Even so, Santa Clarita Valley home prices rose 7.5% last month.

The median price for San Fernando Valley resale homes that closed escrow last month was $212,000, down from $218,000 in July, according to figures released Monday by the Southland Regional Assn. of Realtors.

Condominium values in the San Fernando Valley dropped 3.5%, to $122,500, down from $127,000 in July.

Those changes in single-family home and condominium values were credited to slightly higher mortgage interest rates, limited housing availability and a slow summer buying season, said Beth Sommer, president of the real estate trade group.

Still, rising interest rates and the summer slowdown did not hurt sales in Santa Clarita, where the median price of resale homes rose to $245,000 from $228,000 in July.

Similarly, condominium values jumped from $133,000 to $140,000, figures showed, representing a 5.3% hike.

Prices there pushed higher because of continued strong demand, especially among families raising children, said Nancy Starczyk, president of the Santa Clarita Division of the Southland Regional Assn. of Realtors.

“Our area has continued to grow and I don’t foresee any economic indicators that would slow us down,” she said. “I think we will remain robust.”

By contrast, the San Fernando Valley’s tighter inventory of resale homes and higher-end new homes makes for fewer sales, industry analysts said.

Nevertheless, Sommer said there is some good news to cheer: Existing listings are higher, new listings are consistent, and closed escrows are down slightly compared with the same period last year.

And compared with August 1998, median home prices are up 8.7%.

“We are seeing an increase in home prices [overall],” Sommer said. “We are not saying that we are in a boom, but we do think we are in a good market and that it’s going to stay that way for a while.”

Overall, residential property values in the San Fernando Valley are on the upswing, and last month’s decrease was a “temporary blip in the market,” said John Karevoll, an analyst with Acxiom/Dataquick, a real estate information service.

“There was a surge in condo and entry-level resale homes,” he said. “When a surge happens at the lower end, it tends to register as a price decline in the entire market.”