San Diego County’s home price has dropped for the sixth month and is close to erasing all yearly price gains.

The median home price was $765,000 in November. It is down 10 percent from the all-time high of $850,000 in May as elevated interest rates have slowed the market.

Sales — there were 2,288 in November — continue to slow and are down 2.8 percent month-to-month. But year-over-year sales are down almost 40 percent.

Housing analysts and real estate agents say potential sellers have mostly declined to put homes on the market to wait out the downturn or don’t want to buy a new home to avoid higher interest rates. Meanwhile, potential buyers are having a harder time qualifying.

The San Diego County home price is now up 2 percent annually, a far cry from earlier this year — April — when the price was up 20 percent annually. If trends hold, it is likely annual price gains will be erased for buyers who purchased at the height of the market.

The interest rate for a 30-year, fixed-rate mortgage hit 7.08 percent in November, according to Freddie Mac, up from 3.07 percent the year before.

The number of homes for sale has also dropped. There were 4,750 homes for sale from Oct. 31 to Nov. 27, down from nearly 6,000 in July and August.

San Diego isn’t alone in the downturn in sales. Year over year, Orange County sales were down 50 percent, Ventura County was down 53 percent, San Bernardino County was down 44.5 percent and Los Angeles County was down 44 percent.

All home types experienced a downturn in November:

• Resale condo: Median of $610,000, with about 611 sales. It is down from a peak of $663,000 in May.
  
• Resale single-family home: Median of $825,000, with roughly 1,167 sales. Down from a peak of $950,000 in April.
  
• Newly built: Median of $860,000, with about 332 sales. This figure combines single-family homes, townhouses and condos. Down from the peak of $890,500 in August.

Home price drops don’t necessarily make homes more affordable for borrowers. For instance, if you bought a resale single-family house in April at the peak, $950,000, when the average mortgage rate was 4.98 percent, the monthly payment would have been around $4,353 (assuming 20 percent down). Yet if you bought the same type of home at this November’s price ($825,000) and interest rate (7.08 percent), the monthly cost would be around $4,674.

Source: SDuniontribune by Phillip Molnar