The stats are in, Santa Clarita home sales are up, and the inventory of homes available to buyers is down year over year, for January 2016. As we’ve headed into February 2016, it’s important to take stock of what kind of inventory home buyers are dealing with in Santa Clarita in the new year.

Inventory of homes for sale in Santa Clarita is down about 15% year over year, from January 2015 to January 2016. Buyers need more choices. Less choices can put upward pressure on pricing, which unfortunately can price some buyers out of the type of home they prefer to buy.

Home sales in the Santa Clarita Valley (except Agua Dulce and Acton) 32% in January 2016 compared with January 2015. That’s a huge showing of sales compared to the year prior, even when dealing with less inventory. Buyers of Santa Clarita homes are clearly picking what’s left on the shelves!

And the average home sales price of a Santa Clarita home for January 2016 was up over 7% when compared with January 2015. Nice healthy moderate gain year over year.

Prices of Santa Clarita homes here in 2016 will likely see more single digit percentage increases across the board. Possibly double digit gains in condos as those are largely what’s still affordable to most first-time Santa Clarita home buyers. We can’t predict the future, but this pattern has existed for a few years now. The economy isn’t so hot, so interest rates for home loans have remained low, and even decreased over recent weeks due to softening of confidence globally and nationally.

Here’s a brief video recap of what’s happening:

Santa Clarita Real Estate Update: February 2016

[yt4wp-video video_id=”3fPIGBGM76M”]