California may be known for its sunny weather and warm days, but it’s the Golden State’s housing market that’s responsible for all the heat these days. That’s because by just about any metric imaginable, housing in California has never been hotter than it is right now.
Whether it’s home prices, how quickly homes are selling, or how many homes are on the market, basically every indicator shows that California housing is scalding.
Case in point, the median sales price for a home in California hit $800,000 in April, according to a new report from the California Association of Realtors. That’s an all-time record. Put another way, California housing has never been more expensive.
April’s home prices broke the previous record, set just one month prior.
But it’s not just prices that are hitting all-time highs.
"California continues to experience one of the hottest housing markets as homes sell at the fastest pace ever, with the share of homes sold above asking price, the price per square foot and the sales-to-list price all at record highs, while active listings remain at historic lows," CAR President Dave Walsh said.
"The high demand and shortage of homes for sale, driven by these market factors, continued to drive up home prices and shatter the record-high set just last month,” Walsh added.
As Walsh said, California’s housing market is breaking records in many areas.
One of the most startling figures to come out of CAR’s report is the days on market. According to CAR’s report, the median number of days it took to sell a single-family home in California was just seven days in April. To reiterate, homes are selling in California in roughly one week.
The homes aren’t only selling fast. They’re also selling well above asking price. According to the CAR report, homes sold in California at an all-time record of 103% of their asking price, up from 100% in April 2020.
As a result of how quickly homes are selling, there are significantly fewer homes on the market than there were last year. According to CAR’s report, there was only 1.6 months of inventory on the market in April, down from 3.4 months in April 2020. That figures indicates how many months it would take to sell the current available housing inventory at the current rate of sales.
Put another way, there are less than half as many active listings in California as there were last year.
The lack of inventory appears to be a statewide problem.
Broken down by county, 50 of the 51 counties CAR tracks saw a decline in active listings from April 2020, with 34 counties decreasing by 50% or more.
However, there may be a bit of light at the end of the tunnel.
“The ongoing decline in inventory is due partly to the surge in demand in the past 10 months, but the lack of new listings is also a contributing factor,” CAR notes in its report.