Here are the histories, and forecasts, of our local Zillow Home-Value-Index for each area:
They are forecasting flat or declining prices in three of our larger areas – and they are also predicting a drop-off in values as the selling season will be getting underway in March, 2020 (which sounds far-fetched).
Their track record hasn’t been that great though. Here is their Carlsbad prediction in December, 2015, when they expected a 1.9% increase for 2016 – the actual was +7%:
The Carlsbad HVI has risen 19% since the beginning of 2016!
Can we agree on one likelihood? Prices probably won’t be going up much in the next year or two.
The first third of 2019 has been better than expected. Sales are only 6% below the average for the last five years, and the median sales price hasn’t dropped much:
NSDCC Sales, January – April
Year
# of Sales
Median SP
Median DOM
# of Listings
2015
920
$1,130,000
25
1,811
2016
880
$1,124,500
24
1,978
2017
886
$1,200,000
20
1,782
2018
847
$1,316,000
17
1,702
2019
797
$1,300,000
25
1,760
A few more listings this year, but no flood, and limiting sales somewhat just because of the lack of choice. The tight supply keeps everything in check – price swings aren’t as obvious either.
More data released today on pricing trends, and though San Diego didn’t make this chart, we’re probably in the normal range with Los Angeles because our Case-Shiller indicies have been similar (+1.8% vs +1.1% YoY in SD). Interesting that they call San Francisco ‘undervalued’.
Both the HPI and the Case-Shiller Index were the February readings. There is optimism that YoY pricing will pick up as the selling season rolls on, but they are predicting that prices will decline from March to April, which is unusual:
Looking ahead, after some initial moderation in early 2019, the CoreLogic HPI Forecast indicates home prices will begin to pick up and increase by 4.8% on a year-over-year basis from March 2019 to March 2020. On a month-over-month basis, home prices are expected to decrease by 0.3% from March 2019 to April 2019. The CoreLogic HPI Forecast is a projection of home prices calculated using the CoreLogic HPI and other economic variables. Values are derived from state-level forecasts by weighting indices according to the number of owner-occupied households for each state.
These guys don’t make their data public. Using the Case-Shiller Index instead, we see that the last time we had a drop between March and April was in 2009, at the bottom:
Flat pricing during the prime selling season, and after we had six months of declines at the end of 2018? Could this be where we top out, exactly ten years later?
There are more soundbites about sales and pricing being down overall, but the market for detached-homes between La Jolla and Carlsbad is hanging in there.
There was an extra business day this year, and there will be more sales reported over the next few days – if those two balance each other out, we’re only about 5% under last year’s sales count, and the pricing trend is higher:
Year
# of Sales
Median SP
Avg. $$-per-sf
Avg. DOM
2016
307
$1,120,000
$518/sf
40
2017
279
$1,282,131
$535/sf
44
2018
272
$1,285,225
$567/sf
40
2019
257
$1,350,000
$585/sf
44
Angelo Mozilo said he never saw a soft landing, but if mortgage rates stay close to 4% and sellers can live with the same price as the last guy got, then this might be the first soft landing in history.
The selling season should hold its own, and it will be the off-season where we could see more dramatic swings due to less volume.
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.
This interactive graph shows how our monthly sales this year may be less than they were in 2018, but look great compared to previous years. June has been the peak month for sales in each of the last five years – it’s go time right now!
It looks like San Diego County is #1 among the higher-end locations!
We’re probably at the top of the Too-Nice-To-Leave list too, which helps – and should keep our market stable. If sellers can’t get their price this year, they will wait-and-see what next year will bring!
Ryan is seeing it in Sacramento about the same as we see it here. The market is active but statistically the pricing has been fairly flat – it could be worse!
But the recent flurry of activity has us catching up. The pendings count today is only six behind the count on April 2nd of last year (340 vs 346).
The published March sales counts are going to be disappointing, even if we have a bunch of late-reporters. But the April/May sales should be healthier!
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