California’s housing market closed out 2020 on a high note, recording solid sales and a fifth record-high median price in December, according to the California Association of Realtors. Closed escrow sales of existing, single-family detached homes in California totaled a seasonally adjusted annualized rate of 509,750 units in December, according to information collected by C.A.R. from more than 90 local REALTOR® associations and MLSs statewide.
December home sales were up 0.2 percent from 508,820 in November and were up 28 percent year-over-year, when 398,370 homes were sold on an annualized basis. The year-over-year, double-digit sales gain was the fifth consecutive and the largest yearly gain since May 2009.
For the year as a whole, annual home sales rose to a preliminary 411,870 closed escrow sales in California, up 3.5 percent from 2019’s pace of 397,960.
Per C.A.R., the statewide median home price rose 2.7 percent on a month-to-month basis to $717,930 in December, up from November’s $698,890. Home prices continued to gain on a year-over-year basis with the statewide median price surging 16.8 percent from $614,880 recorded last December. The double-digit increase from last year was the fifth in a row, and the month-to-month gain was higher than the long-run average of 0.8 percent observed between 1979 and 2019. The statewide median home price for the entire year was $659,380, an increase of 11.3 percent from a revised $592,230 in 2019.
Also of note, the median number of days it took to sell a California single-family home was 11 days in December, down from 28 days in December 2019, and only 2 days longer than the lowest number of days ever recorded in the previous month.
Read more from C.A.R.’s December report here.