‘How About San Diego Inventory’?
Two readers suggested inventory as a topic. “‘Topic suggestions?’ How about San Diego inventory? It’s been growing steadily by a 50 to 100 homes a day. On 05/02/2006 SD inventory was 19,494, as of a couple of minutes ago it’s at a mind boggling 21,632 houses for sale.”
Another said, “Zip showed 13,896 on Jan 2, 2006. Thus inventory has grown so far this year at over a 100% annual rate of increase. This is not seasonally adjusted, but I am still guessing that by the end of this year, we will have seen a doubling of inventory from where we started (to over 28K), and this is not a big stretch, given that we are already most of the way there and the year is not even half over.”
The North County Times reports from San Diego. “Sales continued to fall sharply across the board in North County and the inventory of unsold homes on the market has now reached an all-time high for the county as a whole. ‘We are seeing a lot of downward pressure. A lot of buyers are saying, ‘Why should I pay full price?,’ said Carlsbad real estate agent Dennis Smith.”
“And buyers are making low-ball offers, Smith said. But, so far, most sellers aren’t biting, he said. As a result, prices are staying high and even edging up for the relatively few properties changing hands.”
“Every month so far this year, home sales have fallen sharply all over San Diego County. Sales declined 18 percent year over year in January, 17 percent in February, 16 percent in March and 34 percent in April.”
“Sales have declined every month in North County, too. And in May, the single-family sales total of 833 was 22 percent off the May 2005 pace of 1,063 homes. North County condo sales, totaling 370 last month, were off 10 percent from 411 in May 2005.”
“Earlier in the year, some real estate analysts expressed optimism that a busy spring would eclipse concerns about sharp year-over-year sales declines during winter. Instead, the trend has continued and the inventory of unsold homes on the market reached 8,503 in North County at the end of May.”
“Countywide, the inventory had reached 19,674 as of 3 p.m. Friday, a new all-time high that has eclipsed a previous mark set 11 years ago during the recession, Smith said. And the number keeps rising by close to 50 homes a day.”
“‘By the end of the month we should be over 20,000 properties,’ he said.”
“While economic experts suggest that the market cannot sustain its high prices indefinitely because wages have risen much more slowly in recent years, Smith said a sharp drop is unlikely. ‘Eventually, prices are going to have to come down some,’ he said. ‘What’s ultimately going to happen is, some people are going to have to sell and they may begin to take lower prices.’”
and this number was 832K just a few days ago if not yesterday
http://www.ziprealty.com/maps/index.jsp?usage=search&cKey=74rbwvlk
Apparently the 832K is the tip of the iceberg. From the Financial Times:
————————————————————————–
US surge in unsold homes may herald cooling market
By Christopher Swann in Washington
Published: June 7 2006 17:33 | Last updated: June 7 2006 17:33
us housingThe number of unsold homes on the American market has risen by more than 1m over the past year, a gain of a third, increasing the prospect of a rapid cooling of the US property market.
The inventory of new and existing homes waiting for buyers is now approaching 4m.
http://news.ft.com/cms/s/e285dfde-f7af-11da-9481-0000779e2340.html
Sorry, wrong link! Try this–
https://registration.ft.com/registration/barrier?referer=&location=http%3A//news.ft.com/cms/s/c3efe1b0-f641-11da-b09f-0000779e2340.html
There are 100,545 homes for sale in Greater Los Angeles Area
acccording to zip.
“While economic experts suggest that the market cannot sustain its high prices indefinitely because wages have risen much more slowly in recent years, Smith said”
Man, those experts are really smart.
My wife and I lived in San Diego for 3 years until recently moving to Seattle 3 months ago. She’s doing the identical job function here and was able to realize a 45% increase in her salary!
Anyone from San Diego knows about the “Sun Tax” phenomena.
Less than 5% of the population can afford housing in San Diego county. It’s rediculous.
Other than the weather, I don’t see where the quality of life is in that town. Not a lot going on - unless you enjoy talking to surfers all day. I happen to, and I can tell you - they’re fascinating.
The employer “Sun Tax” is so lame. Look at taking a comparable job almost anywhere else outside of SD County and your salary would be at least 10% more.
(Yes, this is what my screen name is derived from.)
I still love it here, despite all the absurdity.
Oh yes, and how about the ridiculous vacation benefits too here in SD. I regularly had 3 weeks back in Chicago and here it’s two even for senior managers and not negotiable. WTF!!
Three weeks–yikes. I started a new job here in Phoenix last September and I got a month right from the get go.
Yeah, there’s something really wrong in SD with employer’s vacation policies. The reality is that they end up having to give that time anyway off the books so to speak (unofficial comp time) otherwise they couldn’t get anyone to work for them.
The reality is that they don’t want you taking an entire month off at a time, so they use the subterfuge of allowing comp time on a case-by-base basis. This is largely due to the enormous cost of doing business in Cali, and the necessity to balance that cost by keeping the business running at maximum productivity for as much of the year as possible.
One example of this is the cost of office space. In Dallas, for example, I have seen class A office space for $3.50/sqft/year, while in Cali it’s more like $3.50/sqft/month. That’s 12x the cost. I could go on, but you get the idea.
Yes, I could see how that might be the motivation for it. The ironic thing about this when they convince some twentysomething to come to SD from back east. The twentysomething thinks it really cool and that they will get to hang out at Pacific Beach and enjoy the weather. Instead they end up working 60 hour weeks and only two weeks of vacation…if they even get to take it that is.
I agree, it’s bait and switch.
But that may be one reason you see so many new business formations here - the twentysomethings quickly figure out that they will have to run their own company in order to take advantage of living here. Shortly thereafter, many of them find they can’t make a go of it once the VC money runs out, so they move the business to NV, WA, OR, or AZ, or at least out to the IE or the boonies east of Sac.
I even know a couple of people that have successfully moved their businesses back to the MidWest. The cost of operations is so much lower that they can afford the snow days and winter vacation slowdowns.
I remember when I first came out to SD to meet with Recruiters and when I brought up the juxtaposition of the salaries and the housing costs they would always retort with the “…your paying for the weather..” comment. I bit my tongue because I needed to work with them to find a job. The companies I’ve worked for here in SD are having a great deal of difficulty recruiting people from outside of California because of the cost of living. Even the weather is not enough to justify the ridiculous housing prices here. Even twentysomethings are balking at the rents relative to the salaries. The only reason I’m here is because I have to be here since my wife is a pharmacist in the Navy and is stationed at Balboa Hospital. Otherwise, I don’t thing we would have left Chicago.
>I remember when I first came out to SD to meet with Recruiters and when I brought up the juxtaposition of the salaries and the housing costs they would always retort with the “…your paying for the weather..” comment.
you should have replied - “I can’t eat weather, a$$hole.”
Does anyone track Oceanside? I have a buddy who purchased a home there recently. I know the area has been getting a little nicer but I still think it’s one of the North County cities that will get hit the hardest.
Oceanside is really only desirable if you live by the ocean. Unless you have $800,000, 2 kids and a Lexus SUV. I suppose it’s a bit like Orange County.
Very white, very cookie-cutter.
I’d say it’ll get totally slammed, just like the rest of San Diego - possibly worse. Tell your friend to get out as soon as he can.
Very White? Have you been down around the pier? Mission Ave? Or the various parks east of the 5 (I think I’m recalling Balderama). Its marine mixed with surfer mixed with rich wannabe-OC mixed with ghetto thug. Most days its like the cantina scene from star wars.
That’s the funny thing I’ve heard in a long time
I grew up near Oceanside so I can appreciate the humor.
Downtown Oceanside…hmm
A Pendleton guard once told me a true story once about a Marine who left the base late one day to walk down to the beach to play his guitar. He was supposed to meet some friends there. Later that night he came to the gate in panic and crying. Some downtown bum had apparently ‘got the best of him’ while he was at the beach by himself. That’s right, got the best as in he got pirated.
You decide if DT Oceanside is a place you’d like to live:)
All the 2002-2006 RE buyers are about to be “pirated” as well!
Ahoy there! I sure hope they get pirated! I sold early this year and will laugh as I watch my CDs grow in value:)
I know this is late, but I lived in O’side for over 6 years. My mother has lived there for 13+ years. It is anything but white. O’side is largely hispanic with a fairly large Samoan population. The area along the coast is THE WORST part of Oceanside, along with the “east side” (Balderama Park area) and North River Road/College area. There are some OK areas, but they are basically “pocket” areas (OK area surrounded by bad area).
Let me know if you want more info. We can e-mail off-line. Also, Huggybear and Pam are from the area and could let you know more as well.
‘“Countywide, the inventory had reached 19,674 as of 3 p.m. Friday, a new all-time high that has eclipsed a previous mark set 11 years ago during the recession, Smith said. And the number keeps rising by close to 50 homes a day.”
“‘By the end of the month we should be over 20,000 properties,’ he said.”’
How many months ago? Current ziprealty inventory = 21,752, probably set to surpass 21,800 this weekend. And that does not include FSBOs, or the many, many new condos, condo conversions, and SFRs entering the market. What does zip include that these Realtors (TM) always manage to miss in their count?
I love the way realtors say “things have picked up in the last few weeks”, then quote inventory from a few months back. I guess they know what they want to know??
“Your search has returned the first 200 of 21802 homes”
I guess I was a bit conservative before — we already hit 21,802 by today (Saturday, June 10), with more homes to be added tomorrow…
i am really confused with all those numbers you guys are throwing out here. does the san diego county number include san diego city? chula vista? or just those incorporated cities? if it includes all towns and cities in the county, 20k is not that much. consider phoenix. don’t tell me that the number of inventory in phoenix alone is more than double the entire san diego county. we are talking about at least 3 times more people (or houses) in san diego county than phoenix.
these numbers are for all of SD county. Please go to my blog, you can see for yourself that the ALL TIME housing inventory RECORD was 19,250 homes for sale, and that happened at the bottom of the last bust, 1995. The population adjusted record inventory is 22,174, and we are only 300 homes away from that number. So yes, the current 21,800 homes are A LOT OF HOMES FOR SALE.
As for Phoenix, no, SD doesn’t have the inventory numbers to match Phoenix. But Phoenix is far far worse. Check out the listing per population ratio. for Phoenix it is already 1:79, for SD it is at 1:142.
Just to give you an idea of how many homes are for sale. In March 2004, there were only 2300 homes for sale in the ENTIRE SD county! there was one listing per 1330 people. In a little more than two years there’s now close to 22,000 homes for sale (a 1000% increase in inventory) and one listing per 142 people.
If anything your data shows how bad Phoenix is, not how good San Diego is just because it is half the inventory of Phoenix. OC Renter - do you have any data on Santa Barbara?
sorry, has not been tracking the central coast.
Something new: SD Padres TV games with constant downtown condo commercials. TV Weather reports featuring the downtown skyline littered with condo construction cranes.
“And buyers are making low-ball offers, Smith said. But, so far, most sellers aren’t biting, he said. As a result, prices are staying high and even edging up for the relatively few properties changing hands.”
Was stationed in San Diego for a spell. And I’ve seen the property there and experienced the weather too. Does not change the fundamental fact that most people cannot afford to live there as it now sits. Come spring 2007 and these sellers will be wishing they took the “low ball” offer. Just my 2 cents.
Come Spring 2007 and the low-ball offers of this summer will be last year’s comps. And as sellers already are finding out, it is impossible to attract offers in a declining market by pricing off last year’s comps.
I thought that real estate never loses value ’cause they are not making anymore?
Start watching the malls folks. How many are out there shopping now. I just came back from Monterey and stopped at the mall while I was there. Few shoppers and three shops have gone out of business in less than a month.
Funny, I noticed this today as well - today was shopping day for me:
Fry’s Electronics: In and out in no time. (odd)
Costco: In and out fast (WTF?)
Best Buy: In and out in no time, plus I got a $40 coupon for my next purchase. (now this is getting wierd)
Santa Monica Place Mall: Half of the stores have no tenants. The second and third level look like a ghost town, and one of the big anchor tenants is closing as well.
At this point I’m wondering if I missed a memo of some sort. Was there a big football game or did the bird flu just hit?
The plan was that they were going to tear down that mall and build mixed-use towers — condos on top of offices on top of retail. The locals objected, so now they’re just going to rip the top off and remodel.
Condos on top of offices on top of retail is actually not a bad idea. That’s the Hausmann concept for 19th century Paris (with 7-8 story height limits in essence determined by the absence of elevators) which has worked pretty well all things considered.
Mind you, that’s street retail and inner-city medium-rise. I don’t know how it would play for a mall in the suburbs and high-rise towers.
This sort of idea was proposed for one area in my city (Canberra, Australia) to try and get a higher density than the current suburbs (Canberra is border-locked :)). It didn’t fly, mainly because the way it was proposed would have left one or 2 developers with too much ongoing control over an entire community.
Yeah! I went to downtown San Diego via southbound 4th Ave to go shopping in Horton Plaza. This was at about 2-3pm. Upon entering downtown I asked where everyone was… the streets seemed very deserted. I wondered if there was a national holiday or something. The weather was good. My gf said it may have had to do with the SD Fair starting up today??? I doubt it was that… but dam near seemed deserted. Horton Plaza seemed so-so in attendance.
Do you have any hard numbers to back up these observations? Just curious because I have seen people on this board remark about San Diego malls as well, in Escondido I believe, and I have wondered if there is any truth to it. Surely there are statistics out there somewhere about consumer spending in SoCal etc. I noticed that a Krispy Cremem went under in San Marcos last week, and also a waitress at Applebees in San Marcos told me that business is REALLY slow!
Businessweek had a sidebar this week about retailers about to get smacked by the house ATM break-down.
It is already in the works. HD wants to stop reporting same store sales, they know what is coming down the road at them.
Was there a big football game or did the bird flu just hit?
World Cup (soccer, futball, whatever you want to call it.) So this is an abnormal data point. However, I’m sure they huge wave of immigrants wasn’t out buying houses either.
I am
thanks to renting and saving for a few years.
I’m starting to feel vindicated after watching these smug idiots for the past 5 years. If feels good to to have no debt whatsoever.
I lived in SD for four years. I love ocean fishing so I went out on the sportfishing boats all the time. I really got to hate the summers there with all the tourists infiltration. You couldn’t even enjoy eating out at your favorite restaurant because of the long lines. Also got to hate the weather, so the same and so mundane. I like some mild change of seasons, a little snow, a little wind, clouds, rain, etc.
I acutally got a bit sick of all the “perfect” weather too. Weird. it really is perfect, but there is no variety.
Yeah it’s thrown me off too. I’m from Chicago originally and seasonality is pretty engrained in my psyche. I’ve been in SD for over a 1 1/2 years now and it’s all a blur because I have no seasonality to demarcate things in my mind.
We don’t have weather, we have climate. (as a joke). Yeah, being from the midwest the first couple of years the lack of seasons really worked on my noodle.
ever heard of the joke about southern california having one 2 seasons, summer and summer.
SD weather may be boring, but SF Bay Area weather just plain sucks. In winters it’s raining very cold rains, sometimes I wonder how can water be so cold and yet not frozen. Summers are short, maybe a couple of months, and chilly too. The never-ending cold blower from the ocean drives me nuts. I look at the people who claim “the weather here is like in paradise” and find it hard to understand what they are talking about. Maybe they are confusing Bay Area with OC, or Sandy Eggo, but it’s definitely not paradise here.
Yeah, SD can get a little bland, so I moved. Tourists were only a problem around the beaches I found. Did a lot of surfing and scuba diving. Wished I mountain biked in the area a little more.
I”m one of those people who needs seasons, too. Last year in my part of TX, the weather stayed unseasonably warm into December and it was driving me nuts. I had some friends who lived in Hawaii for a few years, but moved back. They said paradise gets boring and they were tired of the ocean.
when I was in SD I purchased a CD at the record store. the guy was from Rochester, NY. he said he hated the weather too. it was the same all the time, no seasons.
actually us california natives wish all those who were not born here would never enter california
Bottomfeeder — I (in Florida) can relate.
The housing market is completely stupid right now. Last week I submitted a 50% of list price bid. The house is in Mission Hills which is nice but it’s a complete tear down. The owners wanted 500k for a house that will need to be completly rebuilt! Surprisingly it’s been listed for 3 months and hasn’t received a single offer.
Welcome to the SD houseing market where a house you’ll need to tear down still costs 500K. Little wonder why people are leaving the area.
What’s funny is that the owners received the house for a family member that died. They can sell the house for whatever price they choose. You’d think after having a house listed for 2-3 months and not receiving a single offer it might be time to reconsider your postion.
Never underestmate the power of greed.
They probably expected the relative would die (perhaps s/he was elderly) and already “spent” the money.
Perhaps they ‘assisted’ the relative down the road to eternity. Check the yard and make sure there are no mounds anywhere:)
Inventory is great but for it to be meaningful we also need sales volume, preferably monthly. It’s the Inventory/Sales ratio that tells us how bad or not-so-bad it is, not just inventory alone.
Also, I posted this link that shows inventory and median price in many cites across a range of dates on another thread, but here it is again…
http://www.benengebreth.org/housingtracker/
Nice, but no sales volume
The monthly sales figures are here: http://bubbletracking.blogspot.com/
3,705 sold in 4/06
21,800 currently on the market
21,800 / 3,705 = 6.8 mos supply at recent rate of sales, but we know from the 50 or so daily increase in inventory that the months supply is steadily increasing; in other words, homes are coming on the market faster than the rate of sales plus delistings.
In reality, the actual days inventory is a lot higher as a result of the new inventory which would seem to indicate at a sale rate of 3700 a month that approximately 5000 - 5500 new listings are being added each month to replace the ones sold, thus creating the rise in inventory equal to the difference. Thus, 6.8 is the supply if all new listings stopped, and more likely double that right now given the additional factors, although I get the “standard supply measure”. This would also seem to indicate that a large number of properties are not selling at all.
There are two identical houses in my street in Oceanside (nice area of the city) for sale and both have been in the market for at least 90days. One of the houses is priced about $30K less that the other one and still is not sold.
The more expensive one is for rent now. This an example of how market has deteriorated.
Help u sell out of Encinitas lists 24,139 for sale in SD. I see lots of FSBO
signs around, even in Cardiff. Coast news (free local rag covering the
coastal north county area) has the same list for a single house sold in Carlsbad this week that its had at least 8 weeks (when I started tracking - thought I was living in that groundhog’s day movie, reading the same thing every week). Artist’s colony just got eviction notice because their buildings are being turned into condos! This is in Encinitas, 2 blocks from moonlight beach. Prices are coming down and inventory keeps on growing - pretty sweet combination. Also, people are starting to get desperate in Carlsbad, San Elijio Hills and Santa Luz. I’m seeing ads for auction to the highest bidder (starting at some pretty low numbers). Lots of distance to fall for prices yet.
Sales volume is indeed way down as well in San Diego and one measure of this is the fact that inventory continues to grow by close to 1,500 - 2,000 homes per month. Some points to consider as well:
-Don’t believe the days on market figure. A huge % of homes that don’t sell after 60-90 days get ‘reset’ by the realtor to appear that they were just listed. This is an unethical trick realtors use that makes the DOM figure useless. EG: I have seen DOM for Carlsbad for May as around 65 days, wheras May 2005 was 55-60. Well, this years # is probably well over 100 due to this trick. Last year this trick didn’t need to be used as much becasue homes were selling fast, less were for sale etc.!
-’Median’ price - that is always the figure reported in the news - is NOT a good indicator of price trends. Numerous things can throw the median one way or another. EG: Assume that only 10 homes sold last month in Carlsbad, but last May 1000 sold. Well, if this May sales were all $1,000,000, then your median just shot through the roof even though 99% of the homes listed are languishing and not selling!
-Year over year reports are USELESS! Media are fixated on reporting year over year increases in home prices, but why should this matter to you? EG: How many times have you seen something like this reported…”Home prices rise 4% in May”. I call BS on all these articles. Year over year says nothing about current day to day and month to month trends, and we are in a TOTALLY different market now than 1 year ago. These articles might make you feel good that prices are still rising, while failing to capture the current trends including price declines, huge inventory gains etc.
-New home communities: Builders are offering HUGE incentives to sell homes everywhere these days. They do not like to cut prices, so instead they will offer free upgrades, lawns, even BMWs! Don’t be fooled by comps, assuming they are even listed. Even though the neighbor sold for 900k, what about the 200k in incentives they threw in? Don’t see it in the price do you…yet another cute trick being used to fool the unsuspecting and keep builders out of lawsuits.
-Don’t believe any comps at all, period, until you verify them yourself. Bottom line is that insiders can manipulate comps to their liking and have been for years. EG: Sell a home for 600k but only offering realtors 2% in commissions? Well, they can list it as sold for 620k since they will ‘assume’ that the commission should have been 5-6%.
“Don’t be fooled by comps, assuming they are even listed. Even though the neighbor sold for 900k, what about the 200k in incentives they threw in?”
My theory on the builder incentives is that they have at least two potential reasons to artificially inflate their comps:
1) Accounting rules may allow them to project higher future profits if they use nonpecuniary discounts to a higher purchase price, rather than simply reducing the actual sale price. The result of the incentives is they can book a higher sale price than the actual value of the deal for the buyer, then use the average of those higher recorded sales prices on their books to inflate profit projections, which helps them shore up their stock prices and maintain the appearance that all is well on Wall Street (at least to the extent possible after a 50% haircut).
2) The comps that sellers see from new homes will mislead them into over-pricing their used homes, resulting in a permanent advantage to the builders in the pace at which they move inventories compared to used-home sellers. The clueless used home sellers will tend to keep their homes on the market forever, as they cannot figure out that the new home sale prices omitted the value of the free BMW which was part of the deal.
Getstucco — good critical thinking. Bet you’re right.
Another reason that I have heard is to avoid lawsuits. During the last crash many builders were apparently sued over issues like this. EG: Unsuspecting people overpay for later phases and then discover that they have paid more than earlier phases. Or as prices crash they realize that their house is worth less than they paid and they sue the builder.
A realtor in Southern California that I talked to said ,”even if I reduced a listing I have 100k tomorrow ,it wouldn’t create interest from the buyers right now . ”
Apparently the buyers are either afraid to buy or waiting to see what BB does . Apparently the sales pitch of “get in now before the interest rates go up”,isn’t working anymore with the buyers .I would like to know what the real estate industry thought was going to happen when only about 10% of the buyers can afford to buy in Southern California now .
I’m afraid response to that one is fatally hampered by no disclosure of the percentage decrease in price that $100K represents.
here’s a $100K price cut for *some* buyers -
June 11, 2006
Condo Sales, With a Catch
By JOSH BARBANEL
IMAGINE signing a contract to buy your very first apartment, a studio high above Herald Square in the heart of Manhattan, but at 25 percent below the usual market price. It was a dream that came true a few weeks ago for Daniel A. Montaña, a 27-year-old Web administrator for PricewaterhouseCoopers.
But Mr. Montaña’s dream came with a catch: he may never get to actually buy that apartment. The project is caught up in a legal struggle between the owners of the building and the sponsor firm they contracted with to convert it to condos, and some previous buyers have already backed out of their market-rate deals.
Mr. Montaña put down a 10 percent deposit on a 461-square-foot studio, priced at $299,000. It is one of more than 100 condos that went on sale a few weeks ago at deeply discounted prices at Herald Towers, a former hotel with three 25-story towers and 693 apartments at 50 West 34th Street, diagonally across the street from Macy’s. The average price of a studio condominium in Manhattan is nearly $500,000.
When prices over all were cut by $10 million at Herald Towers last month, it had the appearance of a closeout sale at an appliance store. “There are substantial discounts available to the buying public for a limited time only,” said Elliott P. Joseph, a partner in the Property Markets Group, the sponsor, which cut the prices in an attempt to quickly assemble the number of sale contracts needed to complete the conversion.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/11/realestate/11herald.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1
Chip , that would be a 15% haircut ,sorry I didn’t include that . The point by this realtor was that it was dead out there .
,”even if I reduced a listing I have 100k tomorrow ,it wouldn’t create interest from the buyers right now . ”
That was my opinion all along - in a deflation/bear market price cutting doesn’t help, because they make deflation self-perpetuating (just like bidding wars make inflation self-perpetuating). Volume dries up to a trickle and buyers disappear from the market. Attempts to cut prices scare the buyers even further, since they realize if they buy now their asset prices will be eroded yet more.
This is why deflations are so slow - there is nobody to rectify the increasing bid-ask spread due to the lack of volume. (Exceptions are paper markets, but those aren’t really markets, but rather gambling tables.)
“If real estate prices begin to erode, homeowners should not expect to see all the gains of recent years preserved by monetary policy actions,’ said Fed governor Donald Kohn on March 16th. In his remarks, Kohn attacked the popular “Greenspan put” theory that Fed policy would always protect investors from sharp asset market drops while doing nothing to restrain these markets when prices rise.”
http://tinyurl.com/r44rw
Bullcrap!! That is exactly what they do! (Witness the stock market manipulations and tell me they don’t) We’ll see if BB has the spine AG lacked and whether he will give this country the medicine it so desperately needs. I’ll bet you dollars to donuts he doesn’t have the marbles for it in the long haul.
Median price house in San Diego down 5% from 9 months ago:
http://tinyurl.com/7sg77
These numbers are far from realiable, but still interesting. They only show the listing price, not sold, and I wonder if they use the top figure for ranges?
Remember that real price declines are actually bigger than what is reflected in the median price declines. With inventory this high, buyers are choosing the better houses and ignoring the decrepit ones. So the median home being purchased now is of better quality and/or size than it was a year ago.
And buyers at the low end of the market are being forced out due to high prices so the ones that tend to sell are mid to higher priced and this throws the median off. On the high end prive is not as much of an issue, and the number of people who can afford very high priced mansions has actually climbed with the booming economy and stock market the past few years.
Any idea where North County San Diego (Valley Center) is going? It’s remote, but most zoning seems to require 2 acre or more lots?
3500 sqft homes in Woods Valley now in the $600,000 range. previously in the $700,000 range.
OT, from the NYTimes’ magazine main article this week, all about US debt:
Reasons to Worry
“In the past five years alone, the value of U.S. home-mortgage debt has increased by nearly $3 trillion. Not all of that borrowing went to pay for real estate, the traditional function of mortgages. In 2004, net mortgage borrowing not used for the purchase of new homes amounted to nearly $600 billion. The International Monetary Fund estimates that this kind of equity extraction has risen from less than 2 percent of household disposable income in the year 2000 to more than 9 percent in the third quarter of last year.”