Plateau City

This is what it feels like in Plateau City. It’s a little bumpy but the pricing looks range-bound.

Sales cool off towards the end of the year – even during the frenzy. Surprisingly, last month might end up being the best of the year for sales, and the market should settle down for the rest of 2023….shouldn’t it?

There are only 157 NSDCC pendings today, so it’s likely that in the 4th quarter of 2023, the monthly sales will slip under 100 per month, which is fine. Everyone will be anticipating the spring selling season!

Late-Summer Rally

My thoughts:

  1. Sales are holding up nicely here at the end of August – a time when the buyer pool could have, and should have been completely exhausted. With five business days to go plus late-reporters, we should see this month’s closed sales get up to 160 or so and be near the MoM and YoY numbers – with a higher median sales price.
  2. Of today’s 155 pending listings, 62 of them went into escrow prior to August. All of those 62 should have their contingencies released by now and are just waiting to close. If 40 of those close this month, and the final August sales count gets to 170+ it would be phenomenal. Compare to April, May, and June!
  3. Last month’s drop in the median sales price was a one-off.

There are no comparisons to pre-covid August counts. There were 262 sales in August, 2019, but that was way back when the NSDCC median sales price was $1,354,500 – ancient history!

Given where prices and rates are today, I’ll take 170 August sales though!

NSDCC July Sales

The median sales price of houses sold between La Jolla and Carlsbad last month was 13% lower than it was in June, which demonstrates how terrible it is for a gauge.

Obviously, the houses sold are different each month. In July, there happened to be 35% more houses sold that were priced under $2,000,000 than in June (88 vs. 65), which dragged down the median sales price.

The recent sales counts are impressive, and we’ve already had 91 sales this month with two weeks to go!

We will muddle through!

July Data

It’s August 1st, which means the local 10k InfoSparks data has been updated for July. The NSDCC median sales price may be 17% lower than it was in June, but maybe nobody will notice because it is a subset only we are following closely. The general data looks more homoginized:



The Median Percent paid of the original list price is one of the better indicators of market health. Homes that are presented well are selling, and they are getting all the money.

But not as many are selling – here are the county’s detached-home sales per month over the last five years. Last month’s total of 1,866 sales is 20% below last July’s count, and 47% lower than in July, 2019:

Fewer sales lead to more volatility in price because there are fewer comps to guide both buyers and sellers. Of the 153 NSDCC July sales, 41% were cash buys, which have been the most volatile – in both directions!

Summer 2023 Pricing


The local home pricing is still off the highs of early-2022, but not by much.

The smaller sample sizes (fewer sales) will make it harder to accurately identify the trends and cause more frustration/indecision for both buyers and sellers. Have we recovered, or just briefly paused the softness?

Most of all, it will expose the skill sets of realtors.

Get Good Help!

Survey results from our friends at 1000Watt:

NSDCC April Sales & Pricing, Preliminary

Here is the early count on April sales between La Jolla and Carlsbad, with YoY and MoM comparisons:

There will be some late-reporters but April sales won’t get up to the 184 sales we had in March – which will probably end up being the best month of 2023 (remember that next year).  There are only 148 pendings today so the May sales will most likely be under the March and April counts too.

The pricing doersn’t look that much different than last April when the frenzy was peaking. Just more people paying under list, instead of the majority paying over list.

Here is the county’s median sales price:

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