Lake Forest Housing Market Trend - Large Number of Homes In Pending Status with Purchase Contracts

Lake Forest, CA, is a busy city at South Orange County where there is healthy mix of residential communities near light industrial and commercial areas.

 

The Lake Forest housing market has been busy especially during the past 60 days. 

• 186 Lake Forest home are now listed for sale, including equity, REO and short sales.
• 74 of Lake Forest homes listed are short sales (This is 40 percent of the current market inventory, which is huge and higher than most other nearby cities).

Lots of owners at Lake Forest have lost 35% or more of their equity since 2007.  It's possible that more people at Lake Forest used option ARM loans to buy homes between 2003 and 2006, which are now resetting during the past 6 months.

• 118 of those are Lake Forest SFR detached homes now for sale.
• 117 homes are Lake Forest are now in pending status and under contract of sale.

This is a huge number of pendings as compared to the 186 homes for sale, and we suspect that most and as many as 90% of those are short sales, where the process can take anywhere from 3 months to a year to get the seller approved, find the buyer, and sell the property.

• 34 of the detached SFR homes sold during the past thirty days at Lake Forest.  (appears to be good rate of sale, showing that buyers have been busy).
• Average market time for expected sale of all SFR homes would be 3.5 months. (consistent with what we see at Lake Forest, Aliso Viejo, Laguna Hills, for detached homes).
• Average sold price on SFR during past 30 days was $534,500, which was 98% of the list price and average time on market of 75 days. 
• Only 4 of the sold SFR homes the past thirty days were REO bank owned. (That's consistent for the market not having enough REO homes to sell).
• 6 of the sold SFR homes at Lake Forest were short sales  (This is about 20 percent of the market, which is consistent with other local South Orange County communities and short sales).

Current trend at Lake Forest is a large number of homes now in pending status and under contract. 

 

Buyers of homes have been busy to get contracts, perhaps to take advantage of homebuyer tax credit, but they will have to be patient and find out whether the short sales will work.  

 

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Harrison K. Long, REALTOR® & broker, Explore Group, Coldwell Banker Previews, Irvine, CA.  CA DRE #01410855.  ExploreProperties@gmail.com.  Lawyer member, California State Bar Association #69137.  National Association of Realtors, California Association of Realtors, and Orange County Association of Realtors.  Current Chairperson of Local Government Relations south committee at OCAR.org.  Newport Beach and Irvine area Realtor, broker agent and property information source. 

Always hire an experienced local REALTOR® to help you with your decisions and sale or purchase of a home and property.

Posted via email from Explore OC Homes