California Million Dollar Luxury Home Sales Soar In 2004

The Mortgage-Pro · Site Admin Joined: 19 Jan 2005 Posts: 2248

By Gregory J. Wilcox
Daily News, Los Angeles

California home buyers bought more million-dollar homes in 2004 than during the two previous years combined, thanks to continued torrid appreciation, an industry tracker said Wednesday.

Last year real estate agents across the Golden State rang up 33,107 sales for properties priced at $1 million or more, an annual leap of 73.5 percent, said La Jolla-based DataQuick Information Systems.

The 2004 high-end luxury home market featured a price-to-fantasy ratio run amok, because a year or two earlier those properties would have been well under the $1 million mark.

"A million dollars just isn't what it used to be when it comes to California real estate," DataQuick President Marshall Prentice said in a statement.

The company doesn't expect prices to continue making big gains this year and predicts sales will level off.

"It's not really a surprise," said DataQuick analyst John Karevoll. "The rise in activity was fairly uniform. The Bay Area and Southern California accounts for virtually all of these sales."

High-end sales really surged in the 2004 second quarter, soaring an annual 109.3 percent. And they finished the year strong, too, rising 61 percent in the fourth quarter.

Statewide, there were 221 sales for more than $5 million, 237 in the $4 million to $5 million range, 690 in the $3 million range, 2,894 sales in the $2 million range, and the rest between $1 million and $2 million.

Ross in Marin County and Rancho Santa Fe in San Diego County were communities where virtually all home sales were in the million-dollar category.

Southern California communities, including Calabasas and Malibu, took 17 of the top 25 million-dollar markets. Agents racked up 305 million-dollar-plus sales in Calabasas, the most expensive being a $6 million transaction.

Newly built homes accounted for 5,210 of last year's sales, up 141.8 percent from 2003. San Diego, Orange and Los Angeles counties were the most active markets for new homes, DataQuick said.

The condominium market was hot, too, with 1,677 in the million-dollar category, up 90.8 percent from a year earlier.

Most were in West Los Angeles, San Diego and San Francisco, DataQuick said.

About 15 percent of high-end buyers paid cash, up from 12 percent in 2003, and the median down payment of those who financed was 25 percent.

Leslie Appleton-Young, vice president and chief economist at the California Association of Realtors, agreed the numbers are not surprising. But they're impressive, nonetheless.

"Wow," she exclaimed when learning the number of million-dollar sales.

"The thing that's so sad and so remarkable in many communities is that's a three bedroom, three bath," she said of a million dollar-home today.

© 2005, Daily News, Los Angeles