April home stats: Another view

The LA Times, OC Register and other media outlets tend to use data from DataQuick to measure home prices and sales. Here's data we're trying out from a different source: The County Recorder's Office via Melissa Data.

The information is for the month of April, and compares that data to numbers from April of 2007.




Important thing to be aware of: This data includes "average"sales price instead of median sales price, so we're assuming it is measuring the mean. This is easily skewed by a small number of high-end sales, particularly in ZIPs with few total sales (for instance, if there was a $5 million home sold and the only other sales in that ZIP code were four for $200,000 each, the median would be $200,000 but the mean would be $1,160,000). Which is closer to describing the true "average" home sold?

As you can see, the sales data is a bit more optimistic than the last DataQuick info - which mirrors some reports of increased demand realtors like Steve Thomas have been talking about for a number of weeks now. Still, virtually across the board sales totals are down from last year.

Particularly disappointing were Laguna Niguel (down 44.94%) Mission Viejo - 92692 (down 47.17%) and San Clemente - 92673 (down 44.64%). Laguna Niguel's sales total for the month also was about 70% below the April 2005 sales count; same thing for the 92692 ZIP in Mission. The sales total in the 92673 ZIP in San Clemente was 64% below the April 2005 selling frenzy.

Two areas (Capo Beach, 92624 and Foothill Ranch, 91610) saw an increase in year-over-year sales compared to April 2007. A third, San Clemente, 92672, recorded the same number of sales as last April for a 0% gain/loss. It should be noted, though, that 92624 and 92610 were the two South OC ZIPs with the least amount of sales.