Home sales are expected to soar in these California cities next year

With mortgage rates finally easing, many California cities are expected to see home sales rebound significantly next year, according to a new forecast from Realtor.com.

Five metro areas are predicted to see double-digit, year-over-year sales growth in 2024.

They are Oxnard-Thousand Oaks (18%), Riverside-San Bernardino-Ontario (13.8%), Bakersfield (13.4%), San Diego-Chula Vista-Carlsbad (11%) and Sacramento (10.3%).

Home sales in the Los Angeles-Long Beach area are predicted to climb 9.2% after seeing declining sales for two years, analysts at Realtor are forecasting.

The online real estate listing service, which is certainly hoping for a turnaround, ranked the top 100 metro areas on two factors: expected single-family home sales growth and anticipated growth in median home prices.

In all six of those California markets, prices are expected to climb to more than 40% of the 2017-19 average, according to Realtor.

“Among California metros, an interesting split emerges. Five California metros entered our top 10 list of housing markets but none were Bay Area or Northern Californian metros,” Realtor notes in its report.

In 2024, Realtor’s analysts are expecting sales to decline in San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara by 18.5%, six-percent in Fresno, and be largely flat in the San Francisco-Oakland-Berkeley area.

Realtor also points out that California’s top markets tend to be more sensitive to mortgage rates than many other parts of the nation because less than a third of “homeowners” actually own their homes outright and, instead, owe money to a bank or lender.

Oxnard has the lowest share of homeowners who own their homes outright among the top 10 markets at 30.0%, followed by San Diego at 30.5% and Riverside at 38.4%.

by: Marc Sternfield