Bad news if you are looking to buy.
the entire state of Calif. had only 6,867 foreclosure starts in Q1 2023, thats nothing. and with equity-rich homeowners and easy loan mods, there won't be any "fire sales"soon. This real estate crash is not happening until we start seeing massive layoffs across all industries. Construction and manufacturing should be fucked right now ( due to the rate increases) and they are not hurting at all. Even with reduced buyer demand there are still too many buyers for the number of houses available. 80% of homeowners are locked in at a mortgage rate of 4% or less. They are not moving, keeping inventory at historic low levels. The supply / demand balance is way off kilter. We need waaaay more Californians to get the fuck out of the state and sell their house. Especially Boomers. Month of May 2023 saw 16,350 homes sold across the six county SoCal region. That's the lowest number of home sales in the month of May in 35 years. Take a second to process that. Homes for sale fell to 25,000 in the same six county SoCal region. One of the lowest inventory tallies in the last 11 years. A long way from the huge inventories in 2010-2012.
*When you read "sales were down" it's because of lack of homes for sale NOT Buyer Demand.
Here’s a county-by-county breakdown of May prices and sales, with annual percentage changes:
—Los Angeles County’s median price fell 6.3% to $800,000; sales were down 24.3% to 5,154 transactions.
—Orange County’s median fell 4.8% to $1 million; sales were down 22.3% to 2,304 transactions.
—Riverside County’s median fell 3.6% to $556,500; sales were down 26.0% to 3,323 transactions.
—San Bernardino County’s median fell 4.0% to $480,000; sales were down 29% to 2,209 transactions.
—San Diego County’s median fell 3.3% to $812,250; sales were down 26.1% to 2,717 transactions.
—Ventura County’s median rose 1.2% to $804,500; sales were down 32.0% to 643 transactions.
Manufacturing in Southern California is certainly dodgy and could be in deep shit. They are lying to you. I am in the regulatory business (that is the best way to describe it anyways) and what I do is one of the last things that is done before prototypes or design verfication units are accepted in order to green light production for prime contracts, new/revised products, etc.. This is done across all industries, and while business is not bad, the phone no longer just rings and we have to go out and bushwack to keep things coming in. It has been many many years since that amount of effort has been needed.