PHILIP SWIGER, 56, has lived in Kentucky, North Carolina and Texas. But none of those markets prepared the furniture designer for the home prices he encountered when he moved to Huntington Beach last month.
"As much as you read and hear about it, it was still a total shock to see what prices were like and what you get for your money compared to other places," he said.
Swiger, who sold his Louisville, Ky., home for $500,000 and rented a Huntington Beach town home for $3,000 a month, said he plans to hold off and buy this winter.
"I'm going to roll the dice a bit," he said, "and see if prices come down in the next six months."
He isn't rolling alone. Sobered up from frenzied exuberance over last year's housing gains by this year's declining sales, price reductions and increased housing inventory, a growing segment of Southland buyers are waiting on the sidelines for a significant downshift in prices.
Bob Taylor, owner of Bob Taylor Properties Inc. in Highland Park, noticed the change in buyers in May.
"Unless they can get a good offer accepted, about 75% to 80% of my clients are saying they want to wait up to one year for 10% to 15% price adjustments," Taylor said.
And they appear to have a reason to wait. DataQuick Information Systems reported that the Southern California median price slipped from $493,000 in June to $492,000 in July. The number of sales dropped to 24,669 in July, down about 27% from 33,561 in July 2005.
With an estimated one-third of Southland properties currently "wildly overpriced," according to John Karevoll, chief analyst at DataQuick, a La Jolla-based real estate research firm, patience could be a home shopper's best virtue.
"If you're a buyer, there's no hurry at all," said Edward Leamer, director of the UCLA Anderson Forecast, which provides quarterly economic projections. "Prices are going to be a little weaker a year from now, and there'll be more listings and more choices."
How much weaker remains to be seen, but Leamer anticipates an annual 2% to 3% drop in home prices for three to five years.
Although market indicators may justify a wait-and-see attitude, experts and consumers say timing the market can be tricky.
In 2001, when Aileen Jones, 49, sold her four-bedroom home for $865,000 -- after paying $650,000 for it in 1991 -- she rented a West Hills house and started looking for another investment.
