Southland’s prices growth slows down. Who is the market now?

The prices of houses in southern California have barely increased last month, as potential buyers were not able – or arranged – to tender much more housing costs.

Economists and real estate agents have cited a variety of factors probably contributing to the trend, including high mortgage rates, an increase in inventory and economic uncertainty caused in part by prices outside of failure.

In March, the average price of houses in the region of six counties in southern California increased by 0.38% compared to the month earlier to $ 875,908, according to Zillow Data. In the past 12 months, prices have increased by 1.9%, the smallest annual gain since August 2023.

“The housing market is no longer a seller’s market,” said Orphe Divounguy, main economist at Zillow.

Part of the reason is the sellers themselves, said Divounguy. In the past year, more owners have put their house on the market, deciding that high mortgage rates are there to stay and it is more important to move than to keep the cheap loans they have acquired during the pandemic.

At the same time, potential buyers were not also eager to come back.

Richard Green, director of the USC Lusk Center for Real Estate, said one of the reasons is that mortgage rates remain raised within 6%, considerably limiting what people can buy compared to the Covid-19 pandemic when the rates were lower than half.

“There are only few people who can afford,” he said.

Low employment growth in the past year in the County of Los Angeles has also affected on demand, said Green. Other experts have cited a more recent economic phenomenon: commercial wars.

For months, consumer confidence has dropped, while Americans were growing feared that Trump administration prices are reviving inflation and harming the labor market.

The real estate agent of the Los Angeles region, Mark Schlosser, said that he had not stopped trying to buy for purchase due to economic uncertainty, but he noticed that the houses were now longer on the market.

“There are people who may wait to see (what’s going on) before continuing to shop,” he said.

A big question is whether the economy will enter a recession, a fear that increased sharply at the beginning of the month after President Trump announced his most radical prices to date and the stock market has plunged.

Some of these tasks have since been suspended and for the moment Zillow plans that the economy will avoid a contraction. But in March 2026, the real estate company predicted the prices of houses in the Metropolitan region of the County of Los Angeles de La-Orange will be less than 2.4% that they are today, largely due to the increase in stocks.

If the prices and a trade war push the economy in a recession, the local prices of the houses could still drop, said Green.

“If we have serious prices, the economy will be really bad,” said Green. “It’s scary at the moment.”

Explore the prices and rents of houses for March

Use the tables below to search for home sales prices and apartment rental prices by city, neighborhood and county.

Rental price in southern California

In the past year, asking for rents for apartments in many southern California regions has also shot, but the fires of January in the county of the downward trend.

Housing analysts said that the increase in vacancy levels since 2022 had forced owners to accept less rent. But fires have destroyed thousands of houses, suddenly pushing many people on the rental market.

Most of the destroyed houses were unified houses, and some housing and recovery experts after claim say they expect the highest increases in rent are in larger units to the burning areas of the Pacific and Altadena, with upward pressure on rents decreasing for units that are smaller and more distant from the area disaster.

In Santa Monica, which borders the Pacific Palisades district, the median rent increased by 3.2% in March compared to the previous year, according to Apartmentlist data.

Throughout the city of Los Angeles, which includes the palisades and many districts which are not adjacent to a fire, rents increased only by 0.38% last month.

Apartmentlist has no data for Altadena, but he does it for the adjacent city of Pasadena. Loyers increased by 4.2% in March.