California Sees Drop in $1M+ Home Sales

LA JOLLA, Calif. (DQNews) -- The number of California homes that sold for $1 million-plus declined for the fourth consecutive year in 2009, the result of buyer reticence, a difficult mortgage market and several years of price drops that tugged the value of many homes below the million-dollar threshold, a real estate information service reported.

A total of 18,621 Golden State homes sold for a million dollars or more last year. That was down 23.8% from 24,436 in 2008. In 2007 it was 42,506; in 2006 it was 50,010; and in 2005 it peaked at 54,773. Last year was the lowest sales count since 2002, when 15,703 were sold, according to MDA DataQuick. The San Diego firm tracks real estate trends nationally via public property records.

>>More Real Estate & Mortgage News

>>Search for the Best Mortgage Rates

Total California home sales - including all price levels -increased 16.9% last year, to 460,166 from 393,703 in 2008. One in 25 homes sold for a million dollars or more last year, while the year before it was one in 16, and in 2006 it was one in nine.

"Prestige home sales are a unique sub-category of the real estate market. The buyers and sellers respond to a different set of motivations. In the multi-million-dollar price ranges, decisions are largely discretionary and aren't as dependent upon jobs, prices and interest rates the way they are for most buyers and sellers," said John Walsh, DataQuick president.

"Traditional million-dollar markets are holding up relatively well, while expensive markets that emerged four or five years ago are not," he said.