The C-S index has its foibles, including the weighting of sales pairs based on when the previous sale happened, and also excludes flips and any other sales that occured less than six months apart. 

But I’ll agree that the San Diego C-S index reflects the approximate trend and attitude on the street, generally speaking.  While the media tends to focus on the distressed sales, there are plenty of other people - in fact, the majority of recent home sellers in Carmel Valley – who probably don’t mind how things turned out.

Here’s a review of the detached sales in 92130 over the last 90 days, categorized by when the sellers first purchased their home.  Excluded in the averages are the sales over $1.5 million:

Obviously the distress is focused around those who purchased during the peak years, but for the 60% majority who purchased before or after, they should be feeling satisfied to have done OK.

On a forward-looking note, for those who are thinking of buying at the optimal point where both rates and pricing are low, here is the recent history of how the mortgages rates compare to the San Diego Case-Shiller Index:

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