The numbers are going to bounce around, so can we agree on two things?
A. Variances of 1%-3% are natural.
B. National stats don’t mean anything to you and me.
Let’s keep it local! Here are the San Diego North Coastal 3-month-moving averages on pendings:
Two big YoY increases and a minor decrease look ok to me.
Rich’s latest data is up at www.piggington.com.
He mentioned the slightly-negative turn in pricing last month, but I like these two graphs above. The pricing trend is going to bounce around – as long as we have sales counts close to previous years, we’ll be fine.
Here are graphs from one of the more bullish real estate prognosticators:
Steve is a residential real estate expert who specializes in market trends. He has been in the industry for over 25 years, first as an agent and then developing his own 500-agent real estate firm. Steve now helps producers achieve their true potential. He authors a monthly informational presentation for top professionals titled, “Keeping Current Matters” (also known as KCM), and is seen as a leading industry thought leader.
Follow Steve on Twitter for more:
Rich’s latest report – we need to get used to bloated higher inventory counts:
Read the full article here – with 13 more graphs!
Link to Article
Rich’s latest report is out!
The worrisome spike last month did flatten out, but it does make you wonder if we should adjust our sights.
I agree with Rich that the months of active inventory will probably be rising from now on. But if the coastal market had 3 or 4 months of active inventory, it wouldn’t be a bad thing. Rancho Santa Fe is 7+ and doing fine.
Click here for the full report:
How can sales and prices keep going? With more people arriving.
SANDAG projects 1,000,000 more people will be living in the county by 2050, and this graph shows a surging wave of humans going through middle age:
[OC] US Population Projections by age through 2060 from r/dataisbeautiful
This is the Deputy Chief Economist at Freddie Mac:
It is incredible to see the trend change in every category around 2016 – as if there was a societal shift that gave permission to get back in the game.
Maybe that’s when the Bank of Mom and Dad kicked in, and their distribution of wealth made it possible to buy even though prices were soaring?
Or the resurgence from lower-end buyers enabled the move-up market?
What riddle do you see?
We have dispatched the lightweights around the Bay Area and have now passed those pesky VenCo guys, so only one more town in our way – Los Angeles!
We can do this! Keep being less-affordable San Diego!
The NAR didn’t list the criteria they used to create this graphic, so I’m not sure what we need to do to win, except tell your friends and family to move to Ohio or Scranton, PA?
But seriously. We’re America’s Finest City (though New York City is in the running – wow!). Shouldn’t more rich people be moving here to retire? And fewer retirees be willing to leave?
In a downturn, our housing market could survive better than other cities just because of the retiree influence.
Our favorite doomer is predicting 15% to 20% drops in pricing net year (link in twitter feed in right-hand column). Mark has been making these dire predictions for years now, and eventually he might be right.
But it would take surge in supply to start a downturn…..so all we have to do is keep an eye on inventory counts. If the number of homes increased modestly, sales should respond accordingly.
Where is the balance of too much supply? It will vary in each area, and be based mostly on price. You could have 1-2 over-priced homes not selling in one area, and look like a glut, while in other areas have 5-10 well-priced homes hit the market and all get gobbled up.
I’ll speculate that a surge of more than 20% in the inventory counts is cause for concern. How are we doing so far?
When comparing to the very consistent last few years, a 4% rise in new listings this year stood out. But compared to 2002-2011, the inventory has been remarkably predictable lately – we even had two years with identical counts:
In addition, this year’s increase could purely be due to old listings being re-freshed, an annoying trend that seems to be more popular than ever.
Can we learn from the sales count too?
Absolutely, and any drastic swing in the sales count is the ultimate sign of demand. We will still have late-reporters adding to this year’s count, which should easily get it above the 2015 sales:
As long as rates are in the 3s, we should be fine this season!
When there are so few companies doing any exhaustive research about the market – especially at the local level – realtors will take whatever they can get and pass it along to clients. In this case, that message will be positive.
The full presentation here:
http://cdn2.blog-media.zillowstatic.com/3/151001_Stan_D3-89e328.pdf
Are you looking for an experienced agent to help you buy or sell a home? Contact Jim the Realtor!
CA DRE #01991628, CA DRE #00873197
