San Diego California real estate market:
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Friday, August 20, 2010
Sunday, February 24, 2008
California real estate recovery still years off
According to the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corp. report released last week, California home prices and sales volumes will also slide into 2009, while some areas of the state experience an even more prolonged downturn.
Jack Kyser, chief economist of the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corp, said:
"The housing pains there will remain, probably until 2010."
The statewide median home price last month was down about 17 percent from a year earlier and 5 percent from December, according to DataQuick Information Systems. The statewide median price peaked last spring.
In San Diego, most insiders will agree that the top of the housing market was the summer of 2005.
Century 21 San Diego Realtor
Jack Kyser, chief economist of the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corp, said:
"The housing pains there will remain, probably until 2010."
The statewide median home price last month was down about 17 percent from a year earlier and 5 percent from December, according to DataQuick Information Systems. The statewide median price peaked last spring.
In San Diego, most insiders will agree that the top of the housing market was the summer of 2005.
Century 21 San Diego Realtor
Thursday, February 07, 2008
Stimulus Package ready for President
Stimulus Package on Way To Present
The Senate passed their version of an economic stimulus package today, Thursday, February 07, 2008. The Senate version expands rebate checks for seniors and disabled veterans and includes the same increases to the conforming loan limits for both GSE and FHA found in the House stimulus package. The House just passed the Senate version of the bill and it will now be sent to the White House. The President is expected to sign the legislation by the end of next week, ahead of the Congressional self-appointed deadline of February 15th. The increase in the conforming loan limits will last through 2008, but C.A.R. and NAR continue to lobby for FHA and GSE reform, making these increases permanent.
The U.S. House of Representatives passed a stimulus package last week that raised the FHA and conforming loan limits to as high as $729,750 in high-cost areas. By increasing the loan limits, borrowers will see immediate relief with new liquidity in the mortgage market and the nation will see an additional 300,000 home sales. Research shows that an increase in the FHA limit would enable an additional 138,000 Americans to purchase homes, and 200,000 families to refinance their homes safely and affordably.
Increasing the FHA loan limits is critical to bolstering
Additionally, raising Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac’s (GSEs) conforming loan limit will provide immediate relief to borrowers and alleviate downward pressure on current housing markets. For instance, increasing the GSE loan limit could result in more than 300,000 additional home sales and strengthen current home prices by 2-3%.
Friday, September 14, 2007
Mortgage Industry Layoffs
IndyMac Bancorp (the second-biggest mortgage company), National City Corp. and Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. have been cutting staff. At least 100 mortgage companies have sought buyers or halted lending since the start of 2006, and foreclosures in the second quarter rose to a record, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association in Washington.
Adding to this already dire situation is the fact that mortgage defaults have started moving beyond the sub-prime sector: The Mortgage Bankers Assn. noted a rise in foreclosures on supposedly high-quality prime loans that were used by speculators who put little money down on houses in California, Nevada, Arizona and Florida, and now are walking away due to lower home prices.
Wednesday, August 01, 2007
California foreclosures skyrocket!
Foreclosures hit 17,408 for the three months ended June 30, for an increase of 799 percent from the same period in 2006. These foreclosure numbers well exceed the prior 1996 high.
Rich Toscano, with Pacific Capital Associates in San Diego said: "There will be individual pain for people who made the wrong decisions. We all may end up in a recession."
Tuesday, July 10, 2007
San Diego Home Sales Figures – Not All That They Seem
San Diego Home Sales Figures – Not
All That They Seem
All That They Seem
By Bob Schwartz
brokerforyou.com ©2007 all rights reserved.
This material is subject to copyright and any unauthorized use,
copying or mirroring is prohibited
brokerforyou.com ©2007 all rights reserved.
This material is subject to copyright and any unauthorized use,
copying or mirroring is prohibited
Reviewing the recently released real estate
sales data for San Diego, the lay person might conclude that the June home
appreciation figures were down approximately 1% as compared to June 2005. The
reality is the decline is probably much closer to three or five times the
published figures!
The reasons for this are really quite apparent when one considers the following
facts:
1. The appreciation figures cited are the MEDIAN sales prices. The upper-end,
luxury home market has been extremely strong in Southern California and is
relatively immune to increasing interest rates. It operates totally apart from
the rest of the real estate market. The sales of these upper-end luxury estates
skew the MEDIAN appreciation sales data.
A far more accurate figure would be the AVERAGE sales price. Alternatively, data
should exclude, or make million dollar plus sales a separate category.
2. The reported sales data does NOT take into consideration incentives used by
not only major builders, but, in today’s market, by the majority of San Diego
home sellers, to entice scarce buyers to purchase their properties.
Just open up the Sunday real estate section of your local paper and the
magnitude of these incentives becomes quite apparent. Just a few incentives I
noted in my July 23, 2006 paper: $15,000 closing cost credit and $25,000 towards
an interest rate buy down or upgrades; $50K to help pay your mortgage; seller
pays interest portion of your new loan payment for first 6 months, all
non-recurring closing costs, plus 12 months of HOA fees. I could go on, but, you
must understand that the builders are not being altruistic. No, they just want
to move standing inventory, and move it now before any further declines!
While on the subject of builder incentives, it was just a little over a year ago
that the majority of builders were not even co-operating with real estate
agents. Now, the builder/agent cooperation has gone 180 degrees plus! Typically,
builders offer two or 2.5% co-op commissions. Now,
San Diego agents are being invited to catered
brunches and offered co-op commissions up to 5%, as advertised in the July 23,
2006, Union-Tribune!
The purchase incentive phenomenon is not by any means the exclusive domain of
new
San Diego homes. Actually, I would say the
majority of individual homeowners are also being forced into the incentive game.
Though not many are offering incentives from the start of their marketing, after
six to eight weeks on the market the idea becomes more appealing. Even without
offering any incentives, the majority of offers are now being presented with
buyer incentives built-in as a condition of sale!
A year ago one would be hard pressed to find any individual San Diego home
sellers or major new home builder offering incentives. Now, it is just these
incentives that also skew the appreciation data. A $500,000 home sale with a
$25,000 interest rate buy-down/closing costs package incentive will be recorded
as a $500,000 sale. Yet, the $500,000 sale, in reality was only $475,000 or 5%
BELOW the reported sales data!
So if the $500,000 sale was just 1% below the June 2005 median appreciation, you
can see that the ‘real’ difference was 6% below last year!
Other factors not being mentioned in the press that are important to our market
direction are:
Typically the period from late March through September is the strongest for
San Diego real estate sales. What does both a
huge and continuing month over month sales decline and now a home appreciation
drop, during this ‘hot’ time, portend for the market as it enters the weaker
Fall/Winter period? Lastly, the bulk of the interest only, 100% loans used to
prop up our market for the last few years, has two or three year time periods
until the re-amortization (at the current prevailing interest rates) of the loan
balances. The majority of these interest rate adjustments will occur in 2007 and
2008.
In my opinion, this is no ‘return to normal’ or ‘slight correction’ to the San
Diego real estate market. By year’s end there will be no denying we will
experience a double digit appreciation decline. A decline that will take years,
not months, to work itself out.
*Note -This material is subject to copyright and any unauthorized use, copying
or mirroring is prohibited
About the Author:
Bob Schwartz is a Certified Residential Specialist, San Diego real estate broker
with http://www.Brokerforyou.com in
San Diego Ca. & co-owner of
www.websitetrafficbuilders.com specializing in domain name registration &
Internet domain website hosting. Bob’s San Diego real estate blog is:
http://www.brokerforyou.com/brokerforyou
sales data for San Diego, the lay person might conclude that the June home
appreciation figures were down approximately 1% as compared to June 2005. The
reality is the decline is probably much closer to three or five times the
published figures!
The reasons for this are really quite apparent when one considers the following
facts:
1. The appreciation figures cited are the MEDIAN sales prices. The upper-end,
luxury home market has been extremely strong in Southern California and is
relatively immune to increasing interest rates. It operates totally apart from
the rest of the real estate market. The sales of these upper-end luxury estates
skew the MEDIAN appreciation sales data.
A far more accurate figure would be the AVERAGE sales price. Alternatively, data
should exclude, or make million dollar plus sales a separate category.
2. The reported sales data does NOT take into consideration incentives used by
not only major builders, but, in today’s market, by the majority of San Diego
home sellers, to entice scarce buyers to purchase their properties.
Just open up the Sunday real estate section of your local paper and the
magnitude of these incentives becomes quite apparent. Just a few incentives I
noted in my July 23, 2006 paper: $15,000 closing cost credit and $25,000 towards
an interest rate buy down or upgrades; $50K to help pay your mortgage; seller
pays interest portion of your new loan payment for first 6 months, all
non-recurring closing costs, plus 12 months of HOA fees. I could go on, but, you
must understand that the builders are not being altruistic. No, they just want
to move standing inventory, and move it now before any further declines!
While on the subject of builder incentives, it was just a little over a year ago
that the majority of builders were not even co-operating with real estate
agents. Now, the builder/agent cooperation has gone 180 degrees plus! Typically,
builders offer two or 2.5% co-op commissions. Now,
San Diego agents are being invited to catered
brunches and offered co-op commissions up to 5%, as advertised in the July 23,
2006, Union-Tribune!
The purchase incentive phenomenon is not by any means the exclusive domain of
new
San Diego homes. Actually, I would say the
majority of individual homeowners are also being forced into the incentive game.
Though not many are offering incentives from the start of their marketing, after
six to eight weeks on the market the idea becomes more appealing. Even without
offering any incentives, the majority of offers are now being presented with
buyer incentives built-in as a condition of sale!
A year ago one would be hard pressed to find any individual San Diego home
sellers or major new home builder offering incentives. Now, it is just these
incentives that also skew the appreciation data. A $500,000 home sale with a
$25,000 interest rate buy-down/closing costs package incentive will be recorded
as a $500,000 sale. Yet, the $500,000 sale, in reality was only $475,000 or 5%
BELOW the reported sales data!
So if the $500,000 sale was just 1% below the June 2005 median appreciation, you
can see that the ‘real’ difference was 6% below last year!
Other factors not being mentioned in the press that are important to our market
direction are:
Typically the period from late March through September is the strongest for
San Diego real estate sales. What does both a
huge and continuing month over month sales decline and now a home appreciation
drop, during this ‘hot’ time, portend for the market as it enters the weaker
Fall/Winter period? Lastly, the bulk of the interest only, 100% loans used to
prop up our market for the last few years, has two or three year time periods
until the re-amortization (at the current prevailing interest rates) of the loan
balances. The majority of these interest rate adjustments will occur in 2007 and
2008.
In my opinion, this is no ‘return to normal’ or ‘slight correction’ to the San
Diego real estate market. By year’s end there will be no denying we will
experience a double digit appreciation decline. A decline that will take years,
not months, to work itself out.
*Note -This material is subject to copyright and any unauthorized use, copying
or mirroring is prohibited
About the Author:
Bob Schwartz is a Certified Residential Specialist, San Diego real estate broker
with http://www.Brokerforyou.com in
San Diego Ca. & co-owner of
www.websitetrafficbuilders.com specializing in domain name registration &
Internet domain website hosting. Bob’s San Diego real estate blog is:
http://www.brokerforyou.com/brokerforyou
Wednesday, July 04, 2007
33,933 Real Estate Visitors in June 2007
With 33,933 unique visitors in June 2007, www.brokerforyou.com
is the un-challenged Top San Diego real estate website!
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