Different month, same story: The Los Angeles County housing market is hot and prices are at new highs.
In December, the median home price hit $345,000. That was 23.7% more than the median of $279,000 a year earlier, DataQuick Information Systems, a La Jolla real estate data provider, reported Tuesday.
Year-over-year increases have exceeded 20% every month since July. And prices probably will continue to shoot up at that pace into the spring before "easing back to the mid-teens" by April or May, said DataQuick analyst John Karevoll. "We don't envision a decrease in prices in 2004," he said, "but we do envision a lower rate of appreciation."
The county's median sales price for all of 2003 was a record $319,000, up 21.8% from 2002. That surpassed the largest jump recorded by DataQuick, an 18.2% increase from 1988 to 1989, when the median reached $188,000.
December sales remained brisk, rising 8.3% from a year ago, with 11,059 new and used homes and condos trading hands. It was the busiest December since 1988.
And for the year as a whole, sales kept pace with the county's last prolonged real estate boom. The 2003 tally of 125,907 was up almost 4% from 2002, making last year the busiest year since 1989, when 134,021 homes were sold.
Such demand emboldens builders like Jeff Lee, who plans to construct about 300 dwellings this year in Los Angeles markets including downtown, Playa Vista, Woodland Hills, Boyle Heights, Venice and Hollywood Hills.
"We see more of the same this year, as far as sales and the pace of sales," Lee said. "There is just no supply."
The City of Los Angeles issued permits for 9,000 housing units last year and expected to authorize about the same number this year, he said, which would fall far short of creating enough housing to meet demand.
Facing an acute shortage of land suitable for development in Los Angeles, so-called infill developers such as the Lee Group will continue to turn underutilized and undervalued properties, such as former industrial buildings and failed strip malls, into housing, Lee said.
His Los Angeles company converted a former warehouse near Staples Center into 91 condominiums last year. Eighty-five of the units at Flower Street Lofts, where prices range from $350,000 to $1.1 million, have been sold, Lee said. Now he is converting an 80-year-old office building nearby to upscale lofts.
"We believe that interest rates are going to remain low," Lee said. "We don't see anything to stop that housing market."
