HOME PRICES DEFY TROUBLE

Despite `brutal year' for housing sales, values bucked forecasts and resumed climbing, figures show

Although 2023 was real estate's slowest year in decades, homes somehow held their value.

While Southern California home sales fell to record lows, prices defied expectations and resumed their climb last year.

Housing economist Ralph Mclaughlin called 2023 “a year for housing like no other.”

Home prices have “been resilient in 2023 because the Fed has nailed the landing,” said Mclaughlin, chief economist for Haus.com. “There wasn't a recession and people weren't forced to sell their houses.”

While buyers saw prices soar further out of reach, and homeowners moved only at the peril of facing higher loan rates, those most affected by 2023's sales slump “were those professions who rely on transactions,” he said.

December housing numbers released this week were emblematic of the market malaise buyers, sellers and professionals had been dealing with for the past 12 months.

Home sales fell to 12,012 transactions in the six-county region, housing data firm Corelogic reported Wednesday.

That's Southern California's smallest tally for a December in records dating back 36 years and the fifth-lowest for any month in that period.

For the year as a whole, just 163,753 Southern California houses, condominiums and town homes changed hands in 2023, also the lowest in Corelogic records dating to 1988. That's fewer sales than in 2007 and 2008, when the housing market crashed.

Meanwhile, the median price of a Southern California home — or price at the midpoint of all sales — was $720,000, up 5% from December 2022 levels.

“2023 was a clear departure from the pandemic-fueled speed seen in housing in 2021,” Nicole Bachaud, a senior economist with Zillow, said in an email.

“Home sales declined

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