The number of California homes that sold for more than $1 million declined for the fourth consecutive year ending 2009. This is a result of buyer reserve, a difficult mortgage market and several years of price declines that have lessened the value of a good number of homes below the million-dollar threshold.

A total of 18,621 California homes sold for more than one million dollars last year. That was down 23.8% from 24,436 in 2008. In 2007 it was 42,506; in 2006 it was 50,010; and in 2005 it peaked at 54,773. Last year was the lowest sales count for million dollar plus sales since 2002, when 15,703 homes were sold.

Newly-built homes accounted for 1,457 of last year’s $1 million-plus sales, down 50.3 percent from 2,933 for 2008. There were 1,542 condo sales in the million-dollar category, down 34.7 percent from 2,362 the year before. Most $1 million-plus condos were sold in San Diego, Los Angeles and San Francisco.

Downtown San Diego Condo sales for Million Plus Sales

Million dollar plus condos sales in downtown San Diego were led by downtown San Diego new condos including Bayside San Diego condos and Sapphire Tower San Diego Condos.  A distant third was Pinnacle San Diego condos.  For 2010, we predict that 1 million plus Condos sales in San Diego will continue to decline as the finance market is still not supporting these sales.

The communities where virtually ALL HOME SALES were in the million-dollar category were Portola Valley and Atherton in San Mateo County, Newport Beach in Orange County, Ross in Marin County and Rancho Santa Fe in San Diego County.

Total California home sales – including all price levels –increased 16.9 percent last year, to 460,166 from 393,703 in 2008. One in 25 homes sold for a million dollars or more last year, while the year before it was one in 16, and in 2006 it was one in nine.

“Prestigious property sales are a unique niche of the real estate market. Both buyers and sellers respond to a different set of motivating factors. In the multi-million-dollar price ranges, decisions are largely discretionary and aren’t as dependent upon jobs, prices and interest rates the way they are for most buyers and sellers,” said John Walsh, president of the real estate research firm, MD Dataquick.

“Traditional million-dollar markets are holding up relatively well, while expensive markets that emerged four or five years ago are not,” he said.

Statewide, there were 332 sales for more than $5 million last year, 228 sales were in the $4-$5 million range, 590 in the $3 million range, 1,902 sales in the $2 million range, and the rest – 83% – between $1 million and $2 million.

The median-sized million-dollar home was 2,646 sq.ft., with 4 bedrooms and 3 bathrooms. The median price paid per square foot for all million-dollar homes was $605, down 10.1 percent from a revised $672 in 2008. For the overall market, the square-foot median declined 20.7 percent from $188 in 2008 to $149 last year.