S Kelly Mcdermott

S. Kelly McDermott started her career in advertising, but she now spends many of her days crunching numbers. McDermott is a vice president at Market Profiles of Costa Mesa, one of the better-known consultants to home builders and developers in Orange County. McDermott has been watching Southern California real estate since the late 1960s, first for big outfits such as Real Estate Research Corp. in Los Angeles, and later for smaller consulting firms such as Newport Economics in Orange County.

S. Kelly McDermott started her career in advertising, but she now spends many of her days crunching numbers. McDermott is a vice president at Market Profiles of Costa Mesa, one of the better-known consultants to home builders and developers in Orange County. McDermott has been watching Southern California real estate since the late 1960s, first for big outfits such as Real Estate Research Corp. in Los Angeles, and later for smaller consulting firms such as Newport Economics in Orange County.

Twenty years ago, the Los Angeles metropolitan area stretched from the west San Fernando Valley to central Orange County. Today, there's hardly any flat open space left from Ventura County to San Clemente. Will the built-up area continue to expand or is a saturation point near? Independent consultants who study the Southern California real estate market say the former scenario is most likely--with certain exceptions. Here are some predictions: S.

The number of homes and condominiums sold in Orange County in December rose 2.6% from November and the average price jumped 3% to a record $219,744, according to TRW Real Estate Market Information. December is normally a slow month for home sales, but last month's moderately strong activity does not herald a return to the buying frenzy that characterized much of 1988, according to real estate brokers, home builders and consultants.

The average price of a new, detached house in Orange County soared to $364,550 during the first 3 months of 1989, while sales of new homes dropped by nearly a third, according to a Costa Mesa consulting firm. The average price calculated by Market Profiles was 45% higher than the $251,636 recorded during the first quarter of 1988. Condos and town homes averaged $184,901 during the first quarter this year, up 30% from $142,060 a year earlier. The consulting firm said that 1988 was an exceptionally good year for sales, so the decline in sales activity represents a return to a more normal market.

Strong demand for new housing and an increasing shortage of homes for sale pushed the median price of a new house in Orange County to a record $313,000 during the third quarter. It was the first time that the price of a typical new home topped $300,000, said the Meyers Group, a Corona consulting firm that compiled the quarterly figures. By comparison, the median price of a new house nationally was $112,000 in August, the latest figure available from the National Assn. of Home Builders.

The average price of a new house in the southern half of Orange County soared to $329,214 in the third quarter, an astonishing 55% increase in just one year, according to a report released Friday by housing consultant Market Profiles. While builders sold about the same number of houses through September as they did during the same 9 months in 1987, those houses sold a lot faster this year, most of them as soon as they hit the market. Now, however, there are signs the frenzy is abating, said S.

Some customers were stunned earlier this month when home builder William Lyon Co. raised the $178,000 price of some of its houses in a south Orange County subdivision by $18,000. The increase came just after activists delivered 95,000 signatures to the registrar of voters, enough to get a slow-growth initiative before the voters as soon as the June primary election. Lyon won't say whether the two incidents are connected.

When Signal Landmark got tentative approval to build homes on 1,700 acres in the Bolsa Chica area of Orange County, one of the first things company officials did was hire a consultant to tell them what type of homes to build on the coastal property. The adviser they hired, Goodkin Real Estate Consulting Group of San Diego, supervised an in-depth survey of 100 upscale households.

Eleven of the 25 biggest real estate deals in Southern California last year occurred in Orange County, according to a San Diego market-research firm. The number of local deals, led by the $83-million sale of two Newport Center office buildings, exceeded by three the eight sales in Los Angeles County, COMPS Inc. reported. But the Los Angeles deals involved more money. The Orange County sales added up to $511 million, or 36% of the $1.4-billion total, COMPS said. The eight Los Angeles deals totaled $656 million, or 46%. The Orange County transactions included four office and retail projects, four land parcels and three apartment complexes.