Monday, January 16, 2006

San Diego is Crashing

The Union Tribune has this important news. "San Diego County resale house prices tumbled last month by the biggest number in 18 years of record-keeping and contributed to the smallest year-to-year rise in overall prices in six years, DataQuick reported Monday. The median resale price for existing single-family homes dropped $15,000 from November to December to stand at $550,000, the largest month-to-month decline since DataQuick began keeping records in 1988."

"Last year was the first time since 2001 that the number of home sales fell from the previous year. The total sold last year was 55,366, down 9.1 percent from 2004's 60,886. This also was not a surprise, since monthly sales reports from DataQuick have showed a decline in activity on a year-over-year basis for 18 straight months."

"The total number of listings has been growing, reaching a peak of just over 15,000 listings in November, about five times more than at the peak of the buying frenzy in spring 2004. Consequently, sellers report few if any bidding wars for their properties, and buyers say they have more time to consider their choices."

San Diego is farther along the bubble curve then most other bubble markets. San Diego is a leading indicator as to what is likely to happen in other bubble markets.

5 comments:

  1. I am waiting for the same thing to happen in DC area. I hope it will happen.

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  2. I'm a renter who is a big time believer that we have a massive housing bubble. I also believe that house prices will return to some sort of real price closer to where they were in 2001 or earlier. (Note, nominally that may be higher, but only if incomes also rise).

    Having said that, I personally (not an expert) think this process is going to take 5-6 years to play out, or maybe even more. IMHO, sellers aren't going to break en masse this spring or summer or fall. It took years for Japan's property bubble to hit bottom, and I suspect the same fate for ours.

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  3. As I remember, at its peak, the real estate in Tokyo was valued higher than all the real estate in the US at the time.

    Exaggeration maybe, but certainly an indication that the bubble in US metro areas is not nearly as advanced as the Japanese one was.

    No I am not a cheerleader, I lived in San Dog for five years and was priced out in the first eight months. Sunshine is not on the housing forecast, but neither is doom and gloom (SD and some regions excepted).

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  4. I read an interesting report last week about migration. I believe it was put out by United Vanlines. They has been tracking this sort of data for at least 25years. It showed net migration out of the northeast and California. Gains for the Southeast and Midwest. Also showed 5 and 10 year trends.

    The article was a link from the Wall Street Journal Housing Bubble Blog. Interesting stuff.

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  5. Agree, checkout this blog about the San Diego house flippers in trouble

    http://thisoldhouseflip.blogspot.com

    ReplyDelete