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Marilyn Delao
Realtor®

Direct: (949) 292-7874 Office: (949) 297-2020 Fax: (949) 666-5356 CA DRE License Number: 01344932 Realty One Group 23811 Aliso Creek Rd., #181 Laguna Niguel, CA 92677 Email Me Integrity, Experience, Commitment, Resources & Knowledge.

Orange County’s 2011 homebuying season — the traditionally busy March-August period — saw transactions drop to their third-lowest level since DataQuick Information Systems began tracking housing here in 1988.

Only 2007 and 2008 — the bottom of the housing market crash — were slower than this year’s pace.

DataQuick figures show:

Home sellers and buyers managed to close 15,946 deals from March through August this year.
That’s 33% lower than the 24-year average of nearly 24,000 housing deals in a typical spring and summer.
The slowest year on record: 14,145 completed sales in the March-August period of 2008.
The busiest year: 1988, when 32,176 local homes were sold.
Five other years saw sales of 30,000 or more homes during the peak months: 2002 (30,193), 1999 (30,508), 1998 (30,528), 2005 (31,147), and 2003 (31,649).
Things were only slightly better this year for the resale of existing condos and for sales of newly built homes. Both had the fourth worst homebuying seasons on record.
This year saw buyers close on 4,596 existing condos, down 20% from an average of more than 5,700 deals during the peak buying months.
Sales of newly built homes of all types — houses, townhomes and condos — totaled 1,172 units, down 61% from the average of more than 3,000 homes in the peak months.
Existing single-family home sales totaled 10,178 units, or 32% below the average of just over 15,000 houses in the six-month period.

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Nationally, total home sales this spring and summer were the weakest on records dating to 1963, the Associated Press reported. The figures underscore how badly the housing market is faring and suggest that a recovery is years away.

The AP reported:

Roughly 168,000 newly built homes were sold from March through August, Commerce Department figures show. In a healthy six-month buying season, about 400,000 new homes would sell.
Among resales, about 2.8 million homes sold from March through August this year. That’s roughly as many as in the same periods in 2009 and 2010. In a healthy market, about 3.3 million would be sold in that six-month stretch.