The Southern California housing market has delivered enough pain to go around this year, so far.

Pain for home sellers and their agents in the form of persistently slow sales. Pain for homebuyers in the form of persistently high prices and mortgage rates.

“Affordability remains a major hurdle,” Redfin senior economist Sheharyar Bokhari said in a statement Tuesday, May 20. “Elevated mortgage rates and high prices mean that many buyers are stretching their budgets to make a purchase.”

Southern California saw just 13,883 homes change hands in March, according to figures released this week by real estate data firm Attom.

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While that’s up by 72 homes from March 2024 — or half a percent — it’s still the third-slowest sales tally for the month in the past 20 years. March typically sees more than 20,000 closings a month.

The first quarter was gloomy as well with just over 37,500 transactions in the region during the year’s first three months. That made it the fourth-slowest first quarter of the past 20 years, Attom figures show.

The lackluster sales mirror what’s happening in the nation as a whole, which prompted a flurry of reports that this year’s homebuying season is one of the most dismal in years.

Spring is typically the busiest season for the housing market, and with the listing shortage easing and mortgage rates slightly lower than a year ago, sales should be stronger, Redfin said this week.

But agents for the online brokerage reported that buyers and sellers are particularly nervous about tariffs and the ongoing trade war.

“This spring is sort of a whimper,” Redfin’s Bokhari told Bloomberg.

This year also marks the third straight year of sluggish sales. The only years with fewer sales at this point are 2008 (which marked the beginning of the Great Recession), 2023 and 2024, Attom figures show.

In addition, Los Angeles County lost more than 11,000 homes in January’s firestorms, further dampening sales.

Meanwhile, home prices remain unattainably high for many buyers, even though there’s been some softening in price appreciation.

The median price of a Southern California home, or price at the midpoint of all sales, was $820,000 in March. That’s down $1,000 from February. And it’s down by almost $4,000 from the all-time high of $823,750 in May 2024.

But it’s still up $35,000, or 4.5%, from March of last year.

Home prices are up throughout the region, with annual gains ranging from 1% in Riverside County to almost 6% in Los Angeles County.

That price gain translates into higher monthly house payments even though the average rate for a 30-year fixed mortgage rate — 6.7% in March — was down from a year earlier.

Someone putting 20% down on a median-priced Southern California home typically would pay $4,211 a month, not counting homeowner association fees, taxes and insurance. That’s $180 more per month than in March 2024.

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State Realtor figures show the annual income needed to buy the typical Southern California house almost doubled over the past five years to $213,600 — ranging from $129,000 a year for a typical San Bernardino County house to $373,000 a year for a typical Orane County house. 

Listing inventory eased somewhat in March after remaining depressed over the past two years.

Active listings in Southern California, which dipped to a low of 37,000 homes for sale in the fall of 2023, perked up to 46,000 for-sale listings in March, Redfin numbers show.

Here’s a county-by-county breakdown of median prices and sales counts, with annual percentage changes:

—Los Angeles County’s median rose 5.9% to $900,000; sales were up 1.4% to 4,896 transactions.

—Orange County’s median rose 4.3% to $1.2 million; sales were up 4.2% to 2,157 transactions.

—Riverside County’s median fell 1% to $605,000; sales were down 3.0% to 2,413 transactions.

—San Bernardino County’s median fell 2.3% to $526,750; sales were down 0.5% to 1,643 transactions.

—San Diego County’s median rose 2.7% to $900,000; sales were down 3.8% to 2,189 transactions.

—Ventura County’s median rose 2.8% to $862,000; sales were up 17.9% to 585 transactions.