Median home prices in San Diego increased 14 percent to $358,000 in November compared to a year earlier, while buying activity continued to rise, according to a recent report from Dataquick Inc., the La Jolla real estate research firm.
The six-county, Southern California region showed a gradual recovery last month with the median house price increasing 17 percent over the full year to $321,000, and up 2 percent from the October median.
In San Diego, 3,371 houses were sold in November, up 22 percent from the prior year’s November.
Dataquick said the median price is rising because of two reasons: higher demand coinciding with a dwindling supply, and an increase in transactions involving higher priced homes and fewer foreclosures.
Short sales, or those where the sale price is below what is owed on the mortgage, made up nearly 27 percent of the total transactions in the region, Dataquick said.
Absentee buyers continue to dominate the region’s sales, making up 28 percent of total sales, about the same amount as October, and up from 25 percent in November 2011, the report said.
Buyers paying with cash made up a near-record 33 percent of November’s sales, up from 29.5 percent who paid with all cash in the prior year’s November, Dataquick said.
— SDBJ Staff Report
