Laguna Beach Market Times Slow Down

Laguna Beach homes are taking considerably longer to sell these days than they were last month and slightly longer than a year ago, casting some doubt on the South Cast city's market recovery, according to reports by broker Steve Thomas of Altera Real Estate.

The data, issued last month, tracks homes' market times by taking the current inventory at the rate of new escrows within a given period. Laguna Beach showed a market time of 11.39 months, meaning a home can spend almost a year in the market before being sold.

The market time for the same period last year was a slightly lower 10.97 months, a rise of 3.8% over the year. However, homes are selling much faster than two years ago, at the height of the real estate crisis, when homes spent a whopping 17.70 months on the market.

Countywide, market times have dropped to a more reasonable 2.98 months, which means a Laguna Beach home takes 252 days longer to sell than elsewhere in O.C. Like Laguna, the O.C. average is up slightly from last year, when market times were at 2.85 months.

Of the 376 active listings in Laguna Beach today, only 33 have gone into escrow, and 35 are classified as distressed (usually short sales or foreclosures). This puts the ratio of distressed to regular homes at 9%, better than the 30% share throughout Orange County.

Real estate experts still point to the city's high median prices as the main reason for its slow market. A separate report showed that a mere 18% of the homes are priced below $1 million, and that city medians have ranged between $1 million and $2 million last year.

 

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