Community Real Estate

The ‘forever’ home: Why more people in Southern California aren’t selling their homes

Jacob Gerber, 42, and Brianna Gerber, 37, bought their home in Rossmoor in 2011 with plans to either move to a better home or remodel. The couple has two children, Isabel, 6 1/2, and Nicholas, 3 1/2.They looked for a home to buy that was more modern and met their needs but nothing was available, so they gutted the home and rebuilt it the way they want. (Photo by Matt Masin, Orange County Register, SCNG)

After two years of searching fruitlessly for a new home, Jacob and Brianna Gerber decided instead to remodel their Rossmoor house of six years and stay put.

They moved their garage, gutted and rebuilt their home’s interiorandexpanded the backyard living area. They added a spa, enlarged the master bedroom and installed a new sound system.

“I was always on Redfin. Was there a good trade-off to move to? There was nothing out there,” said Brianna Gerber, 37. “(We decided), ‘let’s build our dream home the way we wanted it with all the touches that we wanted in the location we wanted.’ ”

The Orange County family is part of a growing trend in which homeowners are staying put longer and longer.

Southern Californians selling their homes this past spring had owned them for an average of 9.4 years, according to Attom Data Solutions, an Irvine-based housing research firm. By comparison, the average ownership tenure in the spring of 2008 was 4.6 years, or half as long.

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