Year to Date Home Sales for Long Beach CA

March has come and gone and we are in to April. So did March bring us a windfall or a shortfall for sales? Were sales up or down? Well we won't know till we look at the data. So let's take a look at the number of properties sold year to date in Long Beach. I have included all residential sales reported as closed through the MLS. The chart does not reflect sales of properties over 4 units.

Remember that numbers can be made to confess to anything so let's see what they are willing to tell us today.

1. Total Sales Year to Date: 358 (January 1st 2008 to March 31st 2008)
2. Last Years Sales to Date: 813 for the same period.

So the number of sales that took place was over 50% less than the same period as the year before. There are several reasons for this.

• First, the impression has been that it is not a good time to buy real estate which has scared some buyers. Rates are still extremely low when you look at history.
• Loan guidelines have adjusted. This means that while first time home buyers were still able to get homes many move up buyers were not able to as mortgage companies changed the requirements for loans.
• Sellers had not adjusted their prices to reflect the market conditions.

While sales are down the price of residential properties is not down 50%. Certain areas of the city have had pricing pressure but homes are not 50% of what they used to be. We will be covering what else the numbers are telling us in this first week of April.