Category: Orange Count Housing Stats

The 5 Worst Neighborhoods for Home Appreciation in Orange County 2021

If you’re looking to buy a house in the coming years, do your homework first. Forbes has put out their list of the 5 worst neighborhoods for home appreciation in the Orange County area. These are the cities where home values in Orange County are dropping.

If you own a house in one of these areas you can at least know that it won’t improve substantially any time soon. Or be glad if you were looking to buy in one of these areas as they are trending down!

With appreciation rates across the country fairly stable, 24/7 Wall St. examined which neighborhoods are seeing the most growth — and which are seeing the least. The real estate blog considered factors including appreciation rates, change in home values and population trends to create this list of Best and Worst Neighborhoods for Home Appreciation in Orange County 2021.

Here are the 5 neighborhoods with the lowest home appreciation in Orange County:

Santa Ana


Santa Ana is the second largest city in Orange County, and one of the most densely populated cities in the country. The city is home to those who work at Disneyland and the surrounding theme parks, but it also has a significant homeless population.

The median home price in Santa Ana is $660,000, which is a dramatic change from $270,000 in 2012. While the value of homes in Santa Ana have increased steadily over time, the appreciation rate has been around 2% for the past five years.

Anaheim

Anaheim is most famous for being home to Disneyland, but it is also home to other theme parks such as Knott’s Berry Farm. It’s nicknamed “The City of Kindness” and it’s one of the most affordable cities to live in Orange County.

The median home price in Anaheim is $705,000. While this may seem like a lot compared to other counties across the U.S., consider that prices were $265,000 in 2012! Similar to Santa Ana, the appreciation rate has been steady at around 2% over the past five years. Home values in Orange County continue to drop, making Anaheim a city now looked upon as a bad area.

Westminster

Westminster was actually known as Tri-City back in the 1950s because it incorporated. It is also experiencing a decline in home prices, with a -0.6% appreciation rate. Compare that to the rest of California, where prices are up 4.8% over the past year. 

Fullerton

Redfin ranks Fullerton among the top 10 hottest markets in the country right now thanks to its relatively low real estate prices and proximity to some of Southern California’s most popular cities like Los Angeles, San Diego and Anaheim. The lack of available inventory has led to bidding wars and homes selling above list price.

The median sale price in Fullerton rose more than 11% to $795,000 between March 2020 and March 2021. But there were areas where appreciation was much lower or even negative, according to Redfin.

Huntington Beach

Also known as Surf City U.S.A., Huntington Beach is a city on the coast with a population of over 200,000 people. It’s one of California’s most popular beach towns and it hosts the U.S. Open of Surfing every year.

Huntington Beach homes are a bit more affordable than the median price in Orange County, but they’re still expensive. The median home value is $865,000. While this is fairly high, it’s much lower than the county average of $906,500. That said, homes here have been declining in value over the past year and are expected to continue to fall for at least another year.

The neighborhoods on this list had some of the lowest appreciation rates in Orange County over the past year, and many of them have a consistent track record of under-performing the rest of the county.

If you’re wondering what city has the best home values in Orange County, we can give you a head start: it’s Irvine. Irvine is the clear winner from our research, with above average home values, temperatures, and crime rates, while also having very low property taxes.

If you’re looking to move to Orange County, Irvine seems like a no-brainer. And it has many of the benefits of living in a smaller town without all the disadvantages of being far from major cities or natural landmarks. Plus, the weather is arguably one of the best around!

Are Bidding Wars in Orange County Over?

The quantity of bidding wars in California and nationally simply continues to fall. Is this just a blip in a healthy housing market or something else?

Based on recent data from Redfin, only 12 percent of buyers went through a bidding war in May. This represents a 52 percent decline from the previous year. That is a big difference.

According to Daryl Fairweather, chief economist at Redfin, the decline probably won’t last very long because mortgage rates fell to yearly lows in June.  Lower interest rates makes it more affordable for buyers to own a home.

It mainly depends on affordability and if the home is priced right instead of too high. Redfin claims they’ve noticed an increase in the numbers of home buyers searching for a home. They just aren’t making many offers.

Where bidding wars dropped off most
Bidding wars fell by 65 percent in San Francisco, which is the most of any city since June of 2018. However, once you dig into the data, approximately 28 percent of all offers in San Francisco had a bidding war last month. This number reflects homes with price points of $1 million and under.   Buyers became more discerning and bid up less for homes above $1.25 million.

Buying a house: How to deal with tough competition
The next city was San Jose with only 19 percent of offers having a bidding war in June. That’s a decrease of over 60 percent from June 2018.

In other California cities the rate of sales slowdown is smaller, but still considerable: San Francisco is lower by 15%; Los Angeles has dropped by 7%, Orange County and San Diego are slower by 6% and Riverside-San Bernardino is off by 5%.

Lots of listings today are contingent on the sellers locating an acceptable replacement property. Moreover, there’s numerous offers that come in with contingencies from the buyers on selling their property too.

As of the end of June 2019, the inventory of homes for sale in Orange County is 9,013 vs. 7,887 in June 2018.

From ReportsonHousing, Here’s how this homebuying lack of interest looks at the county level: recent results vs. a year ago and the five-year average for this time of year.

  1. Orange County: 1,771 listings added this year — compared to an average 2,335 increase — bringing the supply of homes to 7,600. This represents 19% more inventory in a year.
    Escrows of 2,548 — down 2% in a year.
    Times it takes to sell? 89 days vs. 73 a year earlier.
  1. https://www.ocregister.com/2019/07/11/rush-to-sell-by-southern-california-homeowners-puts-listings-at-5-year-high/