The Southern California housing market downshifted last month.
The average home price in the six-county region fell 0.2% from November to $867,042 in December, according to Zillow, marking the fifth consecutive month of declines.
Prices are now 1.5% off their all-time high in July, but some economists say prospective home buyers and sellers shouldn’t expect home values to plunge — one reason behind the shift is the market typically slows in the fall and winter and prices are still above where they were a year ago.
Still, more homes are hitting the market and mortgage interest rates remain high, creating a situation of slightly more supply and slightly less demand.
As a result, annual price growth has slowed. Last month, Southern California home prices were 4.3% higher than a year earlier, compared with a recent peak of 9.5% in April.
Some economists expect price growth to slow further this year but not turn negative, because there’s still not enough supply for everyone that wants to live here.
And that was before the Palisades and Eaton fires destroyed or seriously damaged more than 11,000 homes, suddenly thrusting thousands of additional families into a search for housing.
Housing prices by city and neighborhood
Note to readers
Welcome to the Los Angeles Times’ Real Estate Tracker. Every month we will publish a report with data on housing prices, mortgage rates and rental prices. Our reporters will explain what the new data mean for Los Angeles and surrounding areas and help you understand what you can expect to pay for an apartment or house. You can read last month’s real estate breakdown here.
Explore home prices and rents for December
Use the tables below to search for home sale prices and apartment rental prices by city, neighborhood and county.
Rental prices in Southern California
In the last year, asking rents for apartments in many parts of Southern California have ticked down.
Experts say the trend is driven by a rising number of vacancies, which have forced some landlords to accept less in rent. Vacancies have risen because apartment supply is expanding and demand has fallen as consumers worry about the economy and inflation.
Additionally, the large millennial generation is increasingly aging into homeownership, as the smaller Generation Z enters the apartment market.
Prospective renters shouldn’t get too excited, however. Rent is still extremely high and the fires that broke out in January in L.A. County are expected to put upward pressure on rents, particularly in neighborhoods adjacent to the Pacific Palisades and Altadena.
In December, before the fires, the median rent for vacant units of all sizes across Los Angeles County was $2,045, down 0.7% from a year earlier but 6.8% more than in December 2019, according to data from Apartment List.
