Southern California home sales still slipping
DataQuick, which provides home sale information for a number of markets around the country, released Los Angeles-area numbers for June today, and for San Diego yesterday. Sales volume was off by 50 percent in San Bernardino County last month compared with June 2006 (which was already down from 2005), to mention the most extreme example of the slowdown. Sales in LA County were down about 33 percent. The same thing is happening there that is occuring here: Many fewer homes in the lower-prices areas are selling. That means median prices aren’t falling anywhere near as much as the values of some individual homes are.
Here’s a link to DataQuick, see release at top of page. Bay Area numbers will be out later this week. And you might also want to check out the article and discussion on the San Diego Union Tribune’s web site. If it’s been a while since you’ve read a good exchange between the people who type in all caps to say THE CRASH IS COMING and those are thinking that, well, maybe it’s not gonna be that dire, here’s your chance. One poster thinks methamphetamine is going to be part of the undoing of the real estate market. (Thanks to my colleague Mark Schwanhausser, San Diego native, for pointing me to this discussion.)
Why doesn’t anyone post on this blog. The Orange County Register and even the Sacbee (before they pulled the online real estate articles due to the marketing collapsing) have great exchanges. I guess it’s just expensive to live here and no one cares. Too be quite honest, San Jose is not nearly as desirable as the OC or San Diego.
Why all the emphasis on home sales? Is anyone looking at valuation, and the devastating numbers that have already happened in areas like Brentwood, Antioch, Sacramento, etc., areas east and northeast of SJ?
Anyone involved in the real estate business can tell you what is going on, and the question is… will the depreciation head west and southwest? And by depreciation I mean 23 to 27 percent depreciation which I know has hit many of the areas mentioned above.
Have I missed the articles? There are many who have taken their homes off the market, or who do not have the ability to refinance themselves out of ARM’s because of equity constraints, or are having to sell their homes via short sales, and I believe that number will increase in the next two to three years.
Maybe these issues will not prompt a recession. Maybe this will be more of a left coast or right coast issue, but it is happening.
Couple things: To bmac, I also wish I knew why this blog doesn’t get that many posts. The site administrators tell me that lots of people are reading it, but we don’t get too many posts. Perhaps not enough commentary on how the market is about to collapse into utter disarray? That does seem to be what gets people’s blood pumping…
And to GCP, we actually have had a number of articles discussing the depreciation going on in some places (including the one I wrote in today’s paper and online, url here: http://www.mercurynews.com/business/ci_6411785 )
And we also run a zip-code map in the Saturday real estate section of the paper that shows four weeks worth of sales and how median prices in that period compare to the same time last year. Those tell a pretty good tale, but you do need to note how many sales are occurring within a Zip, and realize that if there are few sales in that particular period (say fewer than 30) that the data is more susceptible to wild fluctuations. So check the sales volume on the chart inside. Thanks for reading (and posting).
Well, we own a home in (somewhat desirable)Cambrian. We have “good” but not “great”schools–I believe API scores are around “850″ for the elementary?
A few months back we could have got 800k for it. Now our realtor tells us more like 750-770K.
Realtors tell us it’s still a “sellers market” in Almaden & most homes are selling “as is”. One house we wanted to put an offer on for 998k had 30k of termite damage! The seller wouldn’t budge on helping with the repairs so we decided against it.
What makes it really hard for us is if we see a home we like we have to buy it “outright” with no contengices on selling our place (again-Alamden is a sellers mkt).
There are (2) homes in my neighborhood that went “sale pending” last week, buyers backed out and both are on the MLS again. So, how the heck are we supposed to know what our house will sell for?
Well, it would be crazy for us to take a “gamble” and buy up to a “inflated” area when there is no way to know how much we would get for our house. Add to the fact how unbalanced (unfair a better word?) that we would have to take a hit & whereas a “good” Alamden house (not on the expwy) is getting top dollar.
Also -all of the Almaden homes with min 1700 sq ft AND under 1mil are either stuck in the 50s or on an expressway).
We recently did EVERYTHING on our house-new kitchen,floors, baths etc so looking at the homes in Almaden (with the particle board kithen cabinets that someone slapped a grantie slab on) makes us appreciate our home even more.
We really are attracted by the schools there (our daughter starts kindergarten this fall)but with the way the market is-with the “inequalites” in home prices- there is no way we’ll be buying soon.
Well, we own a home in (somewhat desirable)Cambrian. We have “good” but not “great”schools–I believe API scores are around “850″ for the elementary?
A few months back we could have got 800k for it. Now our realtor tells us more like 750-770K.
Realtors tell us it’s still a “sellers market” in Almaden & most homes are selling “as is”. One house we wanted to put an offer on for 998k had 30k of termite damage! The seller wouldn’t budge on helping with the repairs so we decided against it.
What makes it really hard for us is if we see a home we like we have to buy it “outright” with no contengices on selling our place (again-Alamden is a sellers mkt).
There are (2) homes in my neighborhood that went “sale pending” last week, buyers backed out and both are on the MLS again. So, how the heck are we supposed to know what our house will sell for?
Well, it would be crazy for us to take a “gamble” and buy up to a “inflated” area when there is no way to know how much we would get for our house. Add to the fact how unbalanced (unfair a better word?) that we would have to take a hit & whereas a “good” Alamden house (not on the expwy) is getting top dollar.
Also -all of the Almaden homes with min 1700 sq ft AND under 1mil are either stuck in the 50s or on an expressway).
We recently did EVERYTHING on our house-new kitchen,floors, baths etc so looking at the homes in Almaden (with the particle board kithen cabinets that someone slapped a grantie slab on) makes us appreciate our home even more.
We really are attracted by the schools there (our daughter starts kindergarten this fall)but with the way the market is-with the “inequalites” in home prices- there is no way we’ll be buying soon.
Ummm…sorry about the duplicate posts. Anyway to delete it? (I also posted in the wrong area (duh!) first time user here!)
Ummm…sorry about the duplicate posts. Anyway to delete it? (I also posted in the wrong area (duh!) first time user here!)
I really don’t care what the market is doing. I purchased my home for a great price. Who cares if it is going down by 10 or 20%? Are we getting greedy? I purchased my home with the idea that I can afford the home regardless of what the housing market does. What happened to buying a home and living there?
I just published an article comparing the real estate markets in 3 large Californian cities: Los Angeles, San Jose and San Diego. The article was prompted by the “10 best places to live” article on CNN. You may want to read this real estate comparison at:
http://realestateandhomes.blogspot.com/2007/07/top-10-big-cities-to-live.html
Henry
http://www.movoto.com
The discussion needs to differentiate between existing homes and new homes. Places like Brentwood have some open land, and new home prices have tanked because developers have carrying costs that need to be met no matter what. So a developer will drop prices faster than an owner-occupier. The Central Valley had significant building going on based on speculation/flipping. That is over now. The same differentiation needs to take place in sales reporting - changes in dollar volumes and/or unit volumes don’t matter to homeowners compared to
changes in dollars per square foot or dollars for the median home or average time on market.