Real Estate Luxury Boom in California!

The California luxury home market is on the rise! According to this recent article from Luxury Home Marketing, there has been an increase in high end home sales this year. The article states home sales over $1 million have risen to the highest level since 2007. There were 26,993 home sales over $1 million in 2012. This number was up 26.9% from the 21,267 home sales in 2011. The number of home sales over $5 million is also at an all-time high. It is also interesting to note that 44% of California home sales over $1 million were all cash!

The article is entitled California’s High-end Home Buyers Create Luxury Boom and was posted by Julie Alcaro from Luxury Home Marketing on March 28, 2013. Click on the link to view entire article.

California’s High-end Home Buyers Create Luxury Boom

Posted by Julie Alcaro on March 28, 2013

Consistent with other recent signs of recovery in the luxury market, the number of California homes which sold for a million dollars or more last year rose to its highest level since 2007. A total of 26,993 homes changed hands for $1 million-plus last year, up 26.9 percent from 21,267 in 2011. It was the most sold since 42,502 homes crossed the million-dollar threshold in 2007.  At the same time, the number of transactions for more than $5 million rose to an all-time high.  Statistics are from San Diego based DataQuick, a real estate reporting company.

Last year’s 26.9 percent year-over-year sales gain in the million dollar and above market outpaced the state’s residential market as a whole. Sales across all price ranges totaled 447,573, up 8.2 percent from 413,479 in 2011. Clearly, the luxury market is leading other price points in terms of sales.

See the chart below which breaks out high end sales by price.  Note that we prefer calling closed sales “Real Buyers” and we define a real buyer as someone who not only contracted to buy the home, they showed up at closing and walked away owning it.