San Diego County’s median home price hit another record in June, reaching $575,000, while sales hit their lowest point in years, real estate tracker CoreLogic reported.

The previous record was $570,000 in May. Home prices have been steadily breaking records all year, with prices increasing 5.5 percent in a year as of June.

A lack of homes for sale has reduced sales significantly, while pushing prices up. There were 3,927 home sales in June, down 9.4 percent from the same time last year. That’s the lowest in four years for June in San Diego County.

“Affordability and inventory constraints are likely the main culprits in last month’s sales,” wrote CoreLogic data analyst Andrew LePage, “which applied to all six of the region’s counties and across most of the major price categories.”

San Diego County’s resale home market, the most significant part of the puzzle because it has the majority of sales, hit a new peak while sales dipped. The median for a single-family home reached an all-time record of $630,000, a 5.8 percent increase in a year.

There were 2,403 home sales in June, down 14.5 percent in a year. The last time sales were so low was June 2014 when there were 2,402 sales.

Resale condos reached a median of $430,000, with 1,190 sales (lowest since June 2014) and newly built homes hit a median of $667,250, with 334 sales (higher than the same time last year).

Mark Goldman, finance and real estate lecturer at San Diego State University, said the drivers of housing are strong at the moment — rising household incomes and low unemployment — so people are able to bid more for housing.

Meanwhile, he said rents are still going up, while the population of the county increases each year.

“It’s very, very competitive. People who are looking to buy houses need to be making the best offers that they can,” he said.

Goldman said he anticipated the rate of appreciation for home prices would slow, largely because of rising interest rates. The rate for a 30-year fixed rate loan was 4.7 percent on Tuesday, said Mortgage News Daily, up from around 4 percent at the start of the year.

There has been a slight increase in homes for sale recently. There were 6,413 homes listed for sale in June, up from 5,655 in June 2017 and 6,190 in June 2016, said the Greater San Diego Association of Realtors. In June 2011, during the throes of the Great Recession, there were 12,177 homes for sale.

Competition for homes led to the days on market for all homes dropping to 28 days on market in June, down from 31 days at the same time last year.

Absentee buyers, typically investors who don’t intend on living in the home as a primary residence, made up 21.7 percent of sales in May, up from 21.4 percent of sales at the same time last year. In early 2013, more than 30 percent of sales went to absentee buyers.

Home prices were up across Southern California.

In Ventura County, the median home price was $615,000 (increasing 8.8% in a year); Los Angeles County, $615,000 (up 8%); Riverside County, $380,000 (up 7%); Orange County, $739,000 (up 6%); and San Bernardino County, $334,000 (up 4.4%).

When adjusting for inflation, San Diego County’s home price has still not reached its pre-housing crash price. In November 2005, the median hit $517,500, which would be nearly $660,000 today.

Source: SDuniontribune by Phillip Molnar