About This Section

This special section is designed to give you detailed and comprehensive information about the Orange County housing market. It lists individually more than 10,000 real estate transactions completed in the county in January, February and March, the most recent statistics available.

Information for listings was compiled from public records by Acxiom/Dataquick Information Systems.

Things to keep in mind while reading the section:

* The sales information is based on transactions recorded for the period by the Orange County recorder. The data on home size and other characteristics is from the records of the county assessor.

* Some sales prices may not reflect the entire value of the transaction.

* There may be some transactions that do not appear because of information mismatches or delays in processing.

* Some listings do not include details such as square footage. A number of those listings are for newly built houses that do not yet have a property description on file with the county.

* The information is compiled by ZIP Code but listed by community or city. In some cases, a ZIP Code includes addresses in more than one community. For purposes of this section, ZIP Codes are not subdivided by community; the information is grouped with the largest community.

* The term “typical range” refers to the middle 50%. For instance, a typical price range of $215,000 to $335,000 means that half of sales fell within those two points; a quarter had lower prices and a quarter had higher prices.

* The median price is a midpoint figure--half of homes sold above that price and half sold below.

* Population statistics are from the California Department of Finance and the Center for Demographic Research.

* n/a stands for not available.

CREDITS

John Karevoll, analyst for Axicom/Dataquick Information Services, compiled and collated sales data.

Section staff: Janet Eastman, Jim Carr, Glenn Doggrell, Janice Jones Dodds, Paul Carbo, Jill Jones, Mary Cooney. Also, Mark Boster, Geraldine Wilkins-Kasinga, Kevin P. Casey, Irfan Khan, Robert Lachman, Daryl Strickland, Harrison Sheppard, Christine Castro, Chris Ceballos, Lesley Wright, Joan Fantazia, Virginia Tyson, Dave Barton, Kathy Lawitz, Marc Olson, Brad Bonhall, Kirk Christ, Dave Puckett, Mike Kirkendall, Tia Lai, Russ Stanton, Rosemary McClure, Joan Springhetti.