San Diego real estate

San Diego real estate

San Diego real estate — We’ll start off with the good news for the housing market: The latest monthly data shows that towards the end of the first quarter prices started to fall at a more modest rate.

Following with the bad news: It’s been predicted by many insiders that even though the market decline has slowed, it’s very probable that we will still see a 5% drop in values in 2011.

Now, the ugly news about the housing market: According to Dataquick, a San Diego real estate tracking company, San Diego home sales for the month of May were off by 20% compared to May in 2010. Also, San Diego County median home prices in May were down 4.6%.What makes me call these figures ugly, are not so much the figures themselves. Though a 20% drop in home sales is an eye-opener, the more important fact is that the sales drop in home value decline is occurring in the seasonally best marketing time for real estate. Plus, the rate for a 30 year conventional mortgage is around 4 1/2%, just above the historic low of 4.2% in October 2010. The ratio measuring mortgage cost to renting is 7% below its’ normal, while the price to income ratio is 23% below its’ average. All this is occurring in an environment where home prices have fallen some 33% since the housing market’s peak.

Since I’m a San Diego California-based real estate broker, I’m naturally much more in tune with our local San Diego real estate market than the national market in general. From trade and financial publications I get a pretty good picture of the residential real estate markets across the country. There are bright spots for real estate activity and real estate prices. Recently there has been improvement in the real estate market in Alaska, Iowa, South Dakota, Michigan, Nevada, and perhaps one of the strongest real estate markets, in Washington DC. Washington DC’s real estate market is doing great from all the new government hiring and exceptional starting salaries and benefits. Read more