California home prices continue to soar; half of Orange County homes valued at over a million dollars
MISSION VIEJO, Calif. - After looking at three dozen homes and making two dozen offers, they finally got their dream home.
This is Dave Gilmore's million-dollar mansion in Mission Viejo.
It was listed at $990,000 and sold for $1.75 million.
"Actually one of the first places we looked at was #17 just down the street right here and we were one of the final two out of like 20 bidders on that one and we didn’t get it and took us another two and a half months of relentless searching," said Gilmore.
Get your top stories delivered daily! Sign up for FOX 11’s Fast 5 newsletter. And, get breaking news alerts in the FOX 11 News app. Download for iOS or Android.
Currently, in Orange County, 56% of single-family homes cost more than $1 million.
"About 10 years ago you could get a single family home in some of the more affordable areas in Orange County for the mid-5’s, about $500-$550 [thousand]. And what about now? It could be $850-950 [thousand]."
It's happening on top of extremely low inventory and crazy overbidding wars.
"I’ve been doing this for 44 years and there’s never been a better time in my career to sell a property than right now," said Walt Tamulinas, ERA Orange CO. Real Estate CEO.
Tamulinas says even if that means you have to go somewhere temporarily and wait to buy another home.
Tamulinas foresees interest rates going up to 5 possibly 6% by the end of year… which along with more buyer fatigue, he expects the market to normalize in the next year to year and a half.
"Everybody asks that big, big question: ‘Is the market going to blow up and the prices going to go down?’ I don’t believe that they will. I believe we have a really strong economy in Southern California and I think that will continue and as a result to that the prices will be stable. What’s going to stop is this craziness of overbidding," Tamulinas added.
So if you want to buy a home here, these experts advise – use other people’s money and invest together…or get a tailored strategy in place with a reputable realtor and mortgage lender.
"Think about how to tailor your offer to be very competitive in order to shorten that journey from the start to getting your keys to your next home," Walker said.
"Our intention before we started was to find our forever home. After what I just went through I never want to have to do it again anyway because it was just horrible," Gilmore said.
Tune in to FOX 11 Los Angeles for the latest Southern California news.