Summer Home-Buying Season A Bust
San Diego Home Buying Season
San Diego home sales
Well, my regular readers will know that for some time now I’ve been saying how the usually seasonally strong spring and summer real estate market’s poor performance will most likely be a harbinger of the week to down fall and winter for San Diego housing. Read more 
Home Sales Contracts Fall
Home Sales Contracts Fall
Home sales
The National Association of Realtors said today that its index of sales agreements fell 1.2 percent in August.
Real estate contract signings fell across most of the country, and here in the West they were off 2.4 percent. Read more
San Diego Home Prices Move Up
home prices
Home prices increase in July.
The Standard & Poor’s/Case-Shiller index reported today that home prices increased in July from June in 17 of the 20 cities tracked.
“This is still a seasonal period of stronger demand for houses, so monthly price increases are expected,” said David M. Blitzer, chairman of Standard & Poor’s index committee. “While we have now seen four consecutive months of generally increasing prices, we do know that we are still far from a sustained recovery.”
Also, eighteen of the 20 cities that the Case-Shiller report analyzed show home prices are still below where they were a year ago. The 10-City composite is down 3.7 percent and the 20-city composite is down 4.1 percent compared to July 2010.
Here in San Diego County home prices rose a tiny0.1 percent in July compared to August, but fell 4.1 percent compared to July 2010.
New Home Sales At 6-month Low
Home sales
The U.S. Commerce Department reported today that August new-home sales fell 2.3 percent, to a six-month low in August. This marks the fourth straight monthly decline for new home sales.
New-homes sales are on track for the worst year since the government began keeping records a half century ago!
National Association of Home Builders has said that while new homes represent less than one-fifth of the housing market, they have an outsize impact on the economy. Each home built creates an average of three jobs for a year and generates about $90,000 in taxes.
Government Taking California Homes
Many have heard of the government’s improper use of eminent domain to take private property, usually in ‘blighted areas’ for redevelopment and improvement. Right here in San Diego eminent domain was used to take some of the land to put in the new downtown baseball stadium, Petco Park.
It seems now that LA County has put another twist on taking private property. Yes, it looks like they are using unreasonable, stringent code enforcement to force a number of homeowners in the Antelope Valley off their property. The Antelope Valley is a vast patch of desert on the outskirts of Los Angeles County, and a segment of the few rugged individualists who live out there increasingly are finding themselves the targets of armed raids from local code enforcement agents, who’ve assembled into task forces called Nuisance Abatement Teams (NATs). Read more
Housing Bust – Who is Really to Blame?
Housing Bust
Being in the front lines of the residential real estate market for many years it’s always been quite clear to me that it was government policies that precipitated the housing bust. Talking with many Californians about the disaster in the real estate market, it would seem that many have a short-term memory deficiency.