February’s Real Estate Dollar Totals Dip 17% in Southland, 25% in County

The dollar value of real estate transactions filed in Southern California in February dropped 17% to $7.4 billion from the $8.9 billion recorded a year earlier and was off almost 4% from the $7.7 billion reported in January, TRW Real Estate Marketing Information reported Friday.

Of the five counties in the report, Orange County posted the biggest decline, with $1.5 billion in transactions, down 25.2% from the $2-billion total reported a year earlier.

The county was one of only two, however, to report an increase from January, when recorded transactions of $1.37 million were 8.7% lower than February’s total. Riverside County was up 18.8% in February.

Much of the decline year-to-year, according to industry specialists, can be traced to a dramatic slowdown in refinancing activity. Six months of relatively low interest rates spurred an unusual amount of refinancing in the early part of 1987.

Slightly more than a third of the value of all transactions recorded in Orange County during February consisted of refinancing loans, TRW reported. But that total of $531 million was down 58.4% from the nearly $1.3 billion in refinancing loans recorded in February, 1987.

TRW Real Estate Marketing Information, which tracks property transactions and compiles statistics for lending institutions and title companies, reported that a total of $3.2 billion was borrowed for property transactions filed in February in Los Angeles, Orange, San Diego, Riverside and San Bernardino counties. That, the company said, was the lowest level of borrowing since the $2.6 billion reported in February, 1987.