Home prices in Southern California held steady in February for the first time in nearly a year, figures released Tuesday show, as low prices brought buyers back into the market.
At the same time, home construction rose nationwide last month, helping spark a rally on Wall Street.
Experts say it's not clear whether prices have hit bottom, but they are now low enough that thousands of buyers are emerging as the traditional spring home-buying season begins.
"This feels like an excellent time to buy, and we're in steady jobs," said Rick Asavis, 47, who recently bought a new town house in Sylmar. Asavis and his wife, Karen, 50, were checking out their unit in the KB Home development Saturday to make final interior decorating decisions before moving in later this month.
The Asavises' home purchase was among the 4,590 in Los Angeles County in February -- a 32% increase over the same month last year -- as buyers were lured by low prices and a sense that even if the market continues to fall, houses have become cheap enough to make the investment worthwhile.
The increased sales came as developers started construction at an annualized rate of 583,000 homes in February -- 22% more than in the previous month, the federal government reported Tuesday. The increase was far more than economists had predicted, and the news was an important driver of a jump of nearly 179 points in the Dow Jones industrial average.
In Southern California, the number of homes sold last month in the six-county region soared 41% from a year earlier, to a total of 15,231. The median price remained at January's level -- $250,000.
Yale University economist Robert Shiller said if prices held up for two more months, it could be a sign that the market was stabilizing. Still, it's too soon to predict the end of the housing crisis, he said, because prices nationwide have further to fall.
"The best forecast is an average of recent prices, not the latest month alone," Shiller told Times reporters and editors Tuesday.
The region experienced a similar leveling-off last year, when the median held steady at $385,000 from March to April and then started falling again.
Prices fell so far that median-priced houses in Southern California are selling for half of what buyers were paying at the market's peak in 2007, according to MDA DataQuick. Those low prices, along with low interest rates, have boosted sales.
