Southern California home prices surged in July, as the already white-hot housing market saw heavy demand amid a persistent housing shortage.
The six-county area’s median price climbed 7.7% from a year earlier to $501,000, according to a report released Tuesday from CoreLogic. That was the greatest jump in nearly 2½ years and put the median just $4,000 shy of its all-time high set in the summer of 2007.
Across the region, sales dipped 2.3% from a year earlier, in part because of the shortage of listings.
The rebound — now in its sixth year — has been driven by a steadily improving economy, rock-bottom mortgage rates and a severe shortage of homes listed for sale.
The high cost of housing is increasingly raising concerns that California is becoming inhospitable to those of modest means, particularly in the urban centers of the San Francisco Bay Area and Southern California.
Renters have it worse, the analysis showed, with more than half paying over 30% of their income on housing costs, the threshold where costs are typically considered a burden.