Last month, Orange County home sales fell to their lowest levet in 11 1/2 years as lack of easy credit reduced an already shrunken pool of potential home buyers.

And sales in August could drop even more. Local real estate experts say fewer buyers are qualifying for home loans, and others are shying away from deals, scared off by an ongoing mortgage crisis that has spead from Southern California to rattle international financial markets.

"None of us anticipated the total retreat of the mortgage market and the impact it's had on the housing market," said Patrick Veing, president of Real Data Strategies Inc. of Brea. "No single analyst would have forecast this."

A total of 2391 Orange County Houses, condos and townhomes traded hands last month, the lowest number for the county since January 1996, accorfing to statistics issued Tuesday from market tracker DatatQuick Information Systems.

It also wa the lowest number of sales for a July in the 20 years that DataQuick had been gathering real estate statistics, and the 12th slowest month in two decades. July typically is the fourth busiest month of the year.

The median price of an Ornage Countyu home was $640,000 last month, unchanged from July 2006, DatatQuick reprted. Prices appeared to be buoyed by stronger sales in pricier neighborhoods where buyers are less dependent on risky subprine loans or other exotic mortgage priducts being shunned by Wall Street investors.

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