Hat tip to Mr. T for sending this along, from CNNMoney.com:
Move.com, which runs the Realtor.com website, has identified the 10 top metro areas where it thinks housing markets have started down the road to recovery. Move.com, with a database of homes for sale all over the United States, looked at several factors.
One is changes in asking prices, which reveals seller confidence (or lack thereof). Then there’s the time homes are sitting on market, which shows how fast homes are selling. Move.com also looked at how often prospective buyers were logging on to Realtor.com.
One example of a turnaround town is San Diego. Like the rest of the coastal California housing markets, it went through some post-bubble hard times, with high foreclosure rates and a big dip in home prices. They fell about 40% from their boom highs.
Now, with mortgage related foreclosures pretty much cleaned out of the system, the city has begun a recovery; it has been on the comeback trail for more than a year. Its prices rose 1.6% in 2010, according to Fiserv.
Move expects the recovery to strengthen. Sales have gotten brisker and inventory lasts on the market only a median of 79 days, about half the national median. Sellers have noticed the improvement and raised their asking prices 1.4% in March, compared with a month earlier.
The ten turnaround towns:
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San Diego
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Los Angeles
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Austin, TX
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Boston, MA
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Colorado Springs, CO
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Ft. Myers, FL
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Buffalo, NY
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Dallas, TX
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Philadelphia, PA
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Washington D.C.
Click here for details:
http://money.cnn.com/galleries/2011/real_estate/1104/gallery.10_turnaround_towns/index.html
At least they have stated methods by which they are measuring!
Who to believe? This was Bloombergs top story today.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-05-24/purchases-of-new-homes-in-u-s-probably-stagnated-in-april-near-record-low.html
Hmmm, new home sales up 7% in April ?
Seems to me it’s because of builder financing, If credit were less tight I think that housing in general would be doing a lot better.
, The time for tight credit was in 2003-6.
Everyone always gets it wrong and with the worst timing .
Must be a fear and greed thing.
And yea I think the double dip thing is about over so it make some sense to me.
Jim,
I’m a little confused about your comment in the other related posting on this topic:
“REOs will sell for retail”.
What does that mean? Isn’t the whole point that we don’t know what “retail” really is? Maybe I’m missing something.
JTR – It’s time to collect on the lunch bet now that a) its post superbowl, and b) I opened escrow Monday on a personal residence.
Apologies in advance to all because by purchasing now, I figure I’ve just guaranteed us all a “triple-dip” in the near future!
I’m seeing some realtors that sat on the sidelines for 5 years getting back in the game in anticipation of a market upswing. We should all be happy we live in San Diego County where there is some glimmer of hope in the real estate market and not just continued bad news like most of the country. We have all been so hammered with negative news the last decade that we all question anything positive and immediately look to poke holes in it. I’m hungry for good news!
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/2011/may/24/four-found-dead-skyline-home/
This one may come on the market soon:
Clearfund ~ Congrats on being in escrow! I’m really enjoying my new home. Just planted a little garden today…
In the last 2 months I have had 3 renters that have rented from me for many years suddenly give notice and leave. All 3 of them bought houses. That’s a big signal. Also, been sending my resume out for 2 years and just got 2 interviews.
THOSE ARE BIG SIGNALS TO ME
In other news….
Zillow now predicts prices will fall about 8% this year and says it no longer expects the market to bottom before 2012.
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/housing-crash-is-getting-worse-2011-05-09
If we call the housing bottom for San Diego in March of 2009 then San Diego has done well relative to other markets in the case-shiller home index.
Only San Francisco’s 10.41% and Washington DC’s 9.27% beat San Diego’s 7.24% off the March 2009 number (March 2009 to Feb 2011). That compares nicely to the 20 city National average of -0.56% from the March 2009. It certainly beats Las Vegas’s -15.66% from the March 2009 numbers.
Of course the glass half empty approach would be to say San Diego is -37.88% from June 2006 peak pricing vs a National average of -32.52%. Dallas peak buyers are only off 8.55%, while Las Vegas peak buyers are off close to 58% from the peak.
In the grand scheme of things we’re about middle of the road although I can certainly pick and chose data to put San Diego in more favorable or less favorable light. Only certain thing about San Diego is it’s been more volatile than most markets.
But it is different here! I read that for every market I follow, with the exception of Napa. All I know is that driving down the highway the stores that went vacant and put up for lease signs are now displaying for sale signs.
clearfund, congrats! Mind sharing which area you opened up escrow?
Is there an agreed upon date on which housing started to decline in San Diego? I think the cycles run 5-7 years in SD.
“Is there an agreed upon date on which housing started to decline in San Diego? I think the cycles run 5-7 years in SD.”
I can tell you the 2 highest case shiller values for San Diego are November 2005 @ 250.34 and June 2006 @ 249.60. First spring selling season where YoY was down was March 2006 (248.09) vs march 2007 (233.27). I personally consider San Diego County’s peak to be the 2006 summer selling season, but some localized markets might be slightly different. Certainly by the spring 2007 selling season the market was in decline. By 2008 it was a widespread issue in the media and the “housing bubble” had burst.
For what it’s worth the 1990 minor housing bubble for San Diego bottomed in 1996 with 1997 showing minor YoY improvement. The trend back up was confirmed by 1998. Of course we’ve never seen a housing bubble of this magnitude here in the US, so who knows what the future holds.
Debt in all sectors over the last ten years is the problem. The country as a whole has never seen such a huge increase in debt. Unless there is inflation, I do not see a way out. And the markets in the USA are only doing well because the markets in other countries are in even worse shape.