Buying-Difficulty Gauge

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Written by Jim the Realtor

April 21, 2014

7 Comments

downtown-san-diegoLast week we saw that San Diego was #1 in the nation for least affordable housing compared to the renter’s median income.

This article ranks the Top 10 cities in America by median list price, with the highest eight cities all located in California (San Diego is #7):

http://www.housingwire.com/articles/29729-california-dreaming-be-prepared-to-pay-up

The data is from realtor.com, which not only tracks the median list prices, but they also log the inventory counts for each city.  The MLS coverage may not match up exactly to the metro areas, but let’s compare inventory-to-census populations to gauge the potential competitiveness:

Metro Area
Population
Active Listings
Pop./Actives
Median LP
San Jose
1,892,894
2,023
936:1
$699,000
Oakland
2,632,217
3,082
854:1
$499,000
San Francisco
1,566,101
2,140
732:1
$867,280
Seattle
2,740,536
5,339
513:1
$369,950
Denver
2,697,476
5,586
483:1
$335,000
New York City
8,405,837
17,560
478:1
$377,500
LA-Long Beach
10,017,068
16,238
477:1
$459,990
San Diego
3,176,138
8,569
371:1
$469,000
Houston
6,313,158
19,817
319:1
$225,000
Orange Co.
3,114,363
10,072
309:1
$599,999

Seattle and Denver don’t get mentioned on the highest-priced lists, but the difficulty of buying a home there is duly noted. The actual San Diego residential inventory today is 6,709, or a 473:1 ratio, which would push us up into the same group, and we’d have the highest median LP of those five areas.

Interestingly, the Orange County inventory is 64% higher now than it was a year ago, while the San Diego inventory is only 15% higher Y-O-Y.

http://www.realtor.com/data-portal/realestatestatistics?source=web

7 Comments

  1. Rob Dawg
    Rob Dawg on April 21, 2014 at 12:07 pm

    Ventura County 297:1

  2. Jim the Realtor
    Jim the Realtor on April 21, 2014 at 12:33 pm

    Thank you!

    Census shows 839,620 population estimate for 2013, and 2,719 active listings on the realtor.com page. Let’s call it 309:1.

    Median LP = $525,000 – higher than SD!

  3. Jim the Realtor
    Jim the Realtor on April 21, 2014 at 12:42 pm

    Santa Barbara County:

    435,697 population

    1,144 actives

    381:1

    $700,000 median LP

  4. Jiji
    Jiji on April 21, 2014 at 12:51 pm

    One of the main reasons low inventory in Ventura county is because of slow-growth land-use policies.

  5. Mozart
    Mozart on April 21, 2014 at 1:44 pm

    I think Ventura also gets all its water from local resources. Other counties with low/slow growth also don’t hook into the state systems. Not sure about Santa Barbara.

    Water = Overcrowding

  6. Jiji
    Jiji on April 21, 2014 at 2:05 pm

    One word, “desalination”

    Coming soon to a county near you!!

    Not sure that would get Ventura off the slow growth mode myself, I think it is more NIMBY issues than anything else.

    Also They have a large amount of agriculture in Ventura county so they could easily find water if they truly wanted to.

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