Chalk home sales up to the millions

Alicia Robinson

The sale of multimillion dollar homes has been a hot segment of the

real estate market this year, with more Newport Beach homes valued at

$3 million and up already sold this year than in all of 2003.

From January through June of this year, 93 Newport Beach homes

sold for at least $3 million, compared with 90 home sales in the city

starting at $3 million in 2003, said Steve High of Strada Properties

in Newport Beach.

“We’re tracking an extremely good year in real estate,” he said,

adding that recent sales data show the first sale of a house on the

Eastside of Costa Mesa for more than $1 million.

Average home prices for the first half of 2004 are close to 30%

higher than the same period in 2003 in both Newport Beach and Costa

Mesa, according to data from Strada Properties.

In Costa Mesa, the average sale price for a single-family home was

$638,645 in the first half of this year compared with January to June

of 2003, when the average price was $491,598.

In Newport Beach, the average sale price in the first six months

of 2004 was at $1.9 million, as opposed to an average of $1.47

million for the same segment of last year.

That average is better than the most recent numbers across the

state. The California Assn. of Realtors reported Monday that in June,

median single-family home prices statewide reached $469,170, a 25.3%

increase compared with June 2003. In Orange County, the median sale

price last month was $657,930, an increase of 37.2% since June of

last year.

Despite drooping local sales, real estate brokers said the market

here has been active, with inventory growing from a low point the

market reached in March. People are looking to sell in anticipation

of a post-election slowdown in November, said Bill Cote of Cote

Realty Group.

“I think there’s a lot of people that know [that’s coming], so

they’re trying to sell [before] the election,” he said.

Historically, the rate banks pay for money from the Federal

Reserve goes up after an election, so Cote expects the market to

continue to slow down as November approaches.

“There’s just not a whole lot of confidence in terms of what’s

going to happen,” he said.

Housing sales in the first half of 2004 were slow in Costa Mesa,

where sales sunk 9.6% from the same period in 2003, and in Newport

Beach, sales dipped slightly less than 2% in the year-over-year

comparison.

More properties may come onto the market in the immediate future,

however, because prospective sellers are thinking it’s time to cash

in, High said.

“I just think that a lot of people are anticipating that our

market is at a high point right now, and they want to take advantage

of it,” he said. “I don’t think that we’re going to see a cataclysmic

drop in our prices. I just think we’re going to see some leveling

off.”