The San Diego Monthly Report, authored by Rick Campbell, is in the right column >>>>>>

Here is the latest version:

Low inventory and high demand are pushing the real estate market in San Diego County off the bottom, slowly.

Multiple offers on the best properties in the entry-level market are being fueled by investors. Interestingly, the investors are not flipping these properties, rather, they are renting them out.

Low inventory is here to stay for the next year or two. We don’t see that changing much in the near future for several reasons.

First, there is no new home building going on, which is necessary to relieve the pressure.

Second, many existing homeowners aren’t going anywhere. If they have good jobs here, where would they go? Plus, too many are still underwater and can’t sell.

Lastly, forget about phantom inventory. As of March, the banks owned about 5,000 properties in the county. That number includes homes AND condos. In April, there were about 3,100 properties sold. Even if the banks put all their inventory on the market at once, it’s only seven weeks worth!

So, there it is. The market has reached bottom, but there probably won’t be a major move to the upside until employment starts rising.

Sales of single-family, re-sale homes were up 7.9% year-over-year in April. This is the tenth month in a row home sales have been higher than the year before. The median price for homes was flat year-over-year, which is a nice change from the previous fourteen months of prices being lower year-over-year.

Much of this weakness in price is coming from the move-up and high-end markets. In the entry-level market, prices are firming.