California’s residential real estate market closed 2015 on a high note with double-digit sales growth. The California Association of Realtors (C.A.R.) reported Friday that existing, single-family home sales went up 10.7% year-over-year in the last month of 2015 to a seasonally adjusted annualized rate of 405,530 units. It was the largest annual increase since July 2015. Sales of condos and townhouses were 10.2% higher than a year ago. “As we speculated, sales that were delayed in November because of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s new loan disclosure rules closed in December instead, which led to the greatest monthly sales increase in nearly five years,” C.A.R. president, Ziggy Zicarelli, said in a statement. The high-end home sector experienced even greater sales growth at year’s end compared to the mainstream market. Sales in the $1 million and $1.9 million price range went up 28.1% in December compared with the same month in 2014. For homes of $2 million and up, the annual increase was 17.7%. The median price for a home was $489,310 statewide, up 8% from December 2014, the largest gain since August 2014. The Bay Area continued to set itself apart from the rest of the state. While homes statewide sold in December at a median of 97.9% of their listing price, properties in the Bay Area sold at a median of 100.7%, due to a constrained supply. San Francisco continued to command the highest price per square foot in California at $749. According to preliminary figures, statewide sales for 2015 as a whole increased 6.4% from 2014 to 407,060 single-family homes. “Looking forward, we expect the foundation for the housing market to remain strong throughout the year, with moderate increases in home sales and prices, but headwinds of tight housing supply and low affordability will remain a challenge,” C.A.R. vice president and chief Economist Leslie Appleton-Young said. View the full listing (pictured above).
Write to Andrea López Cruzado at andrea.lopez@dowjones.com