NORTH COUNTY —— The autumn chill in the housing market is stronger than usual, according to the latest report from the North San Diego County Association of Realtors.

Not only have the number of North County sales and the median price for detached homes dropped from September to October —— which is usual —— but the numbers of sales are lower year-to-year, said Robert Brown, a professor of economics at Cal State San Marcos who compiles the North San Diego County HomeDex, a monthly index of housing prices, for the North County Times.

"This looks like a sustained price adjustment," Brown said. "If you take the price decrease with the lower number of sold units, it seems to me to be a little more than just seasonal adjustment."

In October, there were 853 detached home sales in North County down from 960 in October of last year and 926 in September of this year, Brown said.

The detached median price dropped to $600,000 in October from $620,000 in September this year, but was 3.4 percent higher than October 2004, when the median was $580,000. The median is the point where half the prices are lower, half are higher.

For condos and other attached homes, the story was slightly different. The median price rose to $392,000 in October, from $383,500 in September and $380,000 in October 2004. However, year-over-year sales still decreased, from 371 in October 2004 to 299 this October —— a 19 percent drop year over year.

Longer time to sell

Homes are taking longer to sell, said Dennis Smith, a Realtor with Taylor Place Real Estate in Carlsbad who specializes in coastal North County.

"Market time has gone up quite a bit," Smith said. A year ago, the average time to sell a detached home in coastal North County was 44 days; it was 52 days in September and 57 so far in November, he said. Smith used the time to market numbers from the Multiple Listing Service.

Also, the gap narrowed between prices in North County and the rest of San Diego County. North County's median detached price was $52,000 greater than the median of $548,000 in the rest of the county. In September, the price was $67,500 more than the median of $552,500 for the rest of the county.

"I am seeing a little bit more inventory," Smith said. "For the most part, prices are going up over a year ago, but the number of sales are decreasing."

The increase is dramatic when measured since March 2003, the low point of inventory in recent years, Smith said. In that month, fewer than 3,000 homes of all kinds were for sale on the Multiple Listing Service throughout the county, Smith said. As of Monday, more than 15,000 homes were on the MLS, he said.

With more homes on the market, buyers don't have that urgent pressure to buy that they had not so long ago, so they feel free to take longer to buy, Smith said.

In North County, 1,511 detached homes were listed on the service a year ago, said Irv Erdos, a Realtor with ERA Property Movers in Escondido. As of Monday, that number had zoomed to 5,624. For attached homes, the corresponding numbers are 490 and 1,511 homes, Erdos said.

In Oceanside, 563 detached homes were for sale on the service a year ago, Erdos said, compared to 2,476 now. For attached homes in the coastal city, 114 were for sale a year ago; now the number is 250.

And in Escondido, 187 detached homes were shown on the listing service a year ago, compared to 600 homes today. For attached homes, 41 were offered a year ago, compared to 208 now.

Southern California slowdown

The housing market slowdown is taking place throughout Southern California, said Lew Feldman, a real estate and public finance partner at the law firm of Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman LLP in Los Angeles. Feldman said the slowdown won't become a collapse, because new buyers from overseas are poised to enter markets such as San Diego's.

"We haven't seen the full onslaught of what's going to happen," Feldman said. "The Chinese have $700 billion of our paper right now. When they cash it in, they're going to buy real estate and they want to buy coastal communities."

That anticipation of rising demand has brought speculators onto the condo market, Feldman said. Speculators typically seek quick gains, as opposed to buying for intrinsic value as investors do.

In San Diego County, Feldman said said, 40 percent of condos are bought by speculators. That's worrisome, he said, because speculator-driven markets, not governed by long-term considerations, can fall quickly.

In condo purchases in particular, Feldman said, some speculators look at a purchase as an "option": they are willing to default on the purchase if the value drops; if the value rises, they'll "flip" it to another buyer for a quick profit.

However, Feldman said mortgage lenders are being "fairly conservative," so the likelihood of a crash, which he defined as a drop in value of at least 15 percent, is unlikely.

Contact staff writer Bradley J. Fikes at bfikes@nctimes.com or (760) 739-6641.