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Wednesday, March 26th, 2008 at 1:57 PM

Preview of March Sales

We know that there is usually a rush of closings the last few days of every month. This month? Some areas are going to need an avalanche to catch up with last year – though you can probably add 20% to 30% to this month’s totals to account for those closing in the next four business days, and late-reporters. Here are the March 2007 closings, and those already closed this month:

Town or Area&nbsp&nbsp Zip Code&nbsp&nbsp Mar 07&nbsp&nbsp Mar 08
Bonsall 92003 5 0
Cardiff 92007 7 1
Carlsbad NW 92008 21 10
Carlsbad SE 92009 45 12
Carlsbad NE 92010 11 2
Carlsbad SW 92011 23 14
Del Mar 92014 18 8
Encinitas 92024 36 17
La Jolla 92037 22 13
O-side W 92054 25 14
O-side SE 92056 40 19
O-side NE 92057 45 24
Poway 92064 32 14
Ramona 92065 38 14
RSF 92067 17 11
San Mrcs N 92069 33 14
Solana Bch 92075 6 4
San Mrcs S 92078 37 10
Vista S 92081 27 4
Vista Mid 92083 12 6
Vista N 92084 25 17
S-luz/4S 92127 36 18
RB 92128 52 21
RP 92129 34 4
Carmel Vly 92130 56 13
Scripps Rch 92131 31 13
D-town Condo 92101 55 24
SD County All 1,618 705

In November we felt an inflection point hit the market, and since then we’ve seen Fed rate drops, loan-limit increases, and more false hype – it looks like we could use another inflection point, more than anything.

Posted on Wednesday, March 26th, 2008 at 1:57 PM in Statistical analysis | 26 Comments » | Print Print You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Reader Comments: 26 Responses

  1. Wow. Those numbers do not bode well for the "Spring Sellathon!™" (Or I think that’s what the NAR is calling it on the endless ‘buy a house’ commercials during the NCAA Tourney)

    Hopefully, people will get the hint and start really lowering prices (giving them away!) so there will at least be a market. No amount of government intervention in any form is going to help (least of all, rate fixing), the market needs to work.

    150 multiple choice questions | March 26th, 2008 at 2:51 pm

  2. Man, I guess I lost the US Open contest.

    TB | March 26th, 2008 at 3:34 pm

  3. At this pace we will be up to a 36 month "supply" of homes on the market in no time. I wonder how that will affect prices……..

    SMC | March 26th, 2008 at 4:15 pm

  4. Wow — if this is an indication of what is happening in the rest of the US, then the celebrated good news of the slight increase month over month in sales this week for February will be very short lived.

    This makes me think the market is still in free fall.

    Bob | March 26th, 2008 at 4:25 pm

  5. Spring selling season has arrived. Spring buying season however is already over. Ouch not a single area even close to last year. Yet prices are still west of ridiculous.

    Barnaby33 | March 26th, 2008 at 5:27 pm

  6. These numbers bring me back to the discussion we had here awhile back about the number of closings versus the number of realtors in the market.

    Assuming the best…that every sale here means two different realtors and that not a single realtor participated in more than one sale, there are still a boatload of realtors that didn’t make any money this last month!

    Keith Rettig | March 26th, 2008 at 5:36 pm

  7. 10 News did a story today of how Encinitas is the only place to be strong in this market.

    Todd | March 26th, 2008 at 5:43 pm

  8. Todd,
    The report is probably trying to sell their home which just happens to be in Encinitas……

    SMC | March 26th, 2008 at 6:02 pm

  9. This is the point where I feed our gracious host a straight line. I’m not all that concerned about months supply anymore because it measures the wrong thing now. Truth is there are 20% of the houses on the market at prices that will sell in 60-90 days and 80% of the houses that are cluttering up the inventory. This isn’t 2005 when listing = selling. List right = sell. All the rest are wasting everyone’s time.

    Rob Dawg | March 26th, 2008 at 6:50 pm

  10. SMC: sorry, but what a retarded thing to say

    Todd | March 26th, 2008 at 6:56 pm

  11. Todd,
    FYI-Susie Nancarrow(realtor in the Encinitas area) is Loren Nancarrow’s(long time 10 News anchor person)wife. So maybe my statement wasn’t that far off the mark.

    Sometimes you have to think outside the box.

    SMC | March 26th, 2008 at 7:23 pm

  12. An interesting observation.
    The number of pending sales during the last week:

    San Marcos S (92078): 15
    Penasquitos (92129): 9
    Vista S (92081): 7

    In some areas "pending" activity in one week exceeds the number of "closings" during the whole month.

    SD Scientist | March 26th, 2008 at 9:21 pm

  13. I was just going to say that, thanks for having the actual numbers. Here in Vista 92081, I saw every single thing that I had my eye on go pending pretty much immediately. Of course, those were the ones that were priced right.

    It still surprised me – for a market supposedly in arctic freeze mode, there seems an awful lot of action going on. Ticked me off too, because I had hoped to lowball some of these. But I guess I get to be thankful for the new comps…

    Simone | March 26th, 2008 at 11:17 pm

  14. Simone,
    I don’t see the issue. The market isn’t frozen. There are a whole lot of delusional sellers and a very small market of real sellers with real buyers.

    Rob Dawg | March 27th, 2008 at 12:34 am

  15. Todd,
    Looks like we missed out, I just read the information you saw on the 10 News website. They said prices in Encinitas rose 25% since last year(according to CAR and “some Realtors”, maybe one visting the studio?)!!!!

    The example Jim gave a few days ago of the house that recently sold on Heritage for $1,040,000 must have been 800K last year. That would have been 30% off its 2003 sales price of $1,120,000. I knew I should have jumped in last year, now I will priced out of the market.

    In all seriousness, do you really believe that crap when you read/see it? For future reference, if you see that CAR or NAR are being quoted, question the information and how they are coming up with their numbers.

    SMC | March 27th, 2008 at 2:26 am

  16. I am so confused. Every time I read the U-T there is an agent or broker who tells me traffic is up. Does this data mean they draw a false conclusion about the market or even flat out lied? Not possible with the code of ethics.

    Joel

    LV Renter | March 27th, 2008 at 2:28 am

  17. Carmel Valley showing weakness. There is a boatload of new homes coming online there as well. New home prices seemed a bit of a stretch when I saw them in December.

    incessant_din | March 27th, 2008 at 2:34 am

  18. Here is the “game” as I see it.

    In a few weeks there will be an article in one of our local papers proclaiming the median price in 92009 rose dramatically in March. What won’t be given is the reason, that record 5.6M sale in that zip code Jim recently mentioned. It will be averaged with the other 11 sales in 92009 and bring the “median” way up. Don’t know if they will print an article the next month with the dramatic decline, only time will tell.

    SMC | March 27th, 2008 at 2:50 am

  19. LV Renter,

    Traffic is indeed up. We’ve been watching certain markets for years, and this February was the busiest I’ve seen since the glory-days of 2004/2005 WRT **traffic**. What’s surprising though, is that increased traffic is not translating into sales.

    I was honestly expecting quite a spike (as shown by my unusual optimism on the contest thread) based on my observations. Even though traffic was slower in 2006 and 2007, there seemed to be more sales. Interesting…

    BTW, no way Encinitas is up, YOY. In most neighborhoods, prices are down — I’ve seen some areas with significant declines (15%+). The better sales numbers show a shift in market mix, IMHO, not higher prices overall.

    CA renter | March 27th, 2008 at 6:09 am

  20. @SMC

    You are confused about the median vs. the mean. Even a billion dollar home wouldn’t skew the median by much and that’s why people use it over the average (arithmetic mean).

    Guest | March 27th, 2008 at 6:19 am

  21. CA renter saw the same thing I did, lots of tire kicking on the lot so to speak. I too was way too high in my guess. Stuff happens. What gets me is the happy talk bias. Headlines all caps and bold with exclamation points proclaiming a busy spring and page c-11 tiny type DataQuick actual sales.

    Rob Dawg | March 27th, 2008 at 2:33 pm

  22. From the realtor POV, higher sales volume is always good news, even if prices are plummeting. As with stockbrokers and bookies, they get paid whether the customers win or lose, and small commissions are better than no commissions at all.

    GeneK | March 27th, 2008 at 2:44 pm

  23. Perhaps the extra traffic represents inspectors from the banks investigating whether they want to take a particular property on to their books or not.

    Thacther | March 27th, 2008 at 4:13 pm

  24. My unscientific observation for CV is the traffic is about the same as this time last year, but type of buyer is different: older families, in-law families, people who plan to occupy for the rest of their life.

    CVman | March 27th, 2008 at 7:56 pm

  25. Believe it not, much of the traffic I’m seeing is…flippers!!!!

    They think we are at the bottom and there are a number of them (from my totally unscientific observations) looking to "buy the dip." :)

    CA renter | March 28th, 2008 at 12:54 am

  26. Awesome. I have some dot-com stock I can sell them while they are at it.

    Dwip | March 29th, 2008 at 2:25 am

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