Buyers, our summer months are coming to a close, but I expect a final push of new homes for sale towards the end of August and through September. Many of these owners will be trying to catch the tail end of the most popular time to sell and they will be heavily competing for your business against other homes for sale in their neighborhood. The best way to find motivated sellers is to initiate negotiations with your offer. Homes priced competitively will still go quickly, so use the Home Finder on my website. If you have friends who are thinking about buying, I suggest that they stay on top of the market by viewing all properties for sale in their neighborhood at SanDiegobythesea.com
Sellers, the strategy this time of the year is Marketing, Marketing, Marketing! Because summer inventory levels have grown so high, and will continue to grow at least through the end of September, all sellers that need to sell must demand
professional and aggressive marketing. If you know anyone who is thinking about selling, please let me know how I may be of assistance so their property stands out from all the rest.
S.D. housing market may only be in eye of storm
- UNION-TRIBUNE - August 19, 2007
The release of the latest real estate figures last week – showing a 2.2 percent decline in the median price of a house in San Diego in July – prompted some observers to express the hope that things can only get better from here.
“Most of the declines in San Diego have happened,” John Karevoll, an analyst with La Jolla’s DataQuick Information Systems, said last week. “Now it appears to be re-establishing a balance we have yet to see for the (Southern California) region.”
But it might be premature to say we’re hitting a “balance,” especially because the median price reflects an upwardly skewed picture of the market. The real price declines are much worse, says real estate broker Bob Schwartz.
“One thing that those numbers don’t show is the amount of incentives people have to give to get someone to buy their house,” Schwartz says. “On a $500,000 home, you might have to give $15,000 in concessions, which doesn’t show up on the median price.”
Even if we are re-establishing a balance, it might only be the type of balance that a hurricane-battered ship achieves when it suddenly finds itself in the eye of the storm. The ship can stay in balance until the next round of winds hits.
For the San Diego housing market, the winds are already blowing hard.
July 2005 marked the peak of the local housing boom, which was fueled in part by the prevalence of adjustable-rate mortgages with little or no down payments and little solid documentation showing whether the borrowers could afford to pay.
For many borrowers, that meant July was the last month of super-low, two-year “teaser rates” on their mortgage payments. As those payments adjust upward, we can expect a new round of defaults and foreclosures on loans.
This trend will worsen next month, which is the two-year anniversary of the nationwide peak in the housing boom. By October, more than $50 billion worth of adjustable-rate mortgages will require higher monthly payments, and that number is projected to grow by more than $30 billion each month through September 2008, according to the Credit Suisse banking firm.
Because many of the borrowers could scarcely afford to make their payments at the teaser rates, they are going to be in a bigger bind when the rates adjust upward. Even if the Federal Reserve moves to push interest rates lower, many borrowers will be forced to sell their homes at a loss or go into foreclosure.
Already, the number of defaults, foreclosures and bank takeovers in San Diego County has risen immensely, jumping from 5,401 in the first half of 2006 to 18,409 in the first half of 2007, says RealtyTrac, an Irvine-based firm that monitors residential real estate trends.
DataQuick shows a similar trend using different data. DataQuick says that notices of default in San Diego surged in the first half, rising from 3,311 in the January-to-June 2006 period to 8,314 during the same stretch this year.
The release of the latest real estate figures last week – showing a 2.2 percent decline in the median price of a house in San Diego in July – prompted some observers to express the hope that things can only get better from here.
“Most of the declines in San Diego have happened,” John Karevoll, an analyst with La Jolla’s DataQuick Information Systems, said last week. “Now it appears to be re-establishing a balance we have yet to see for the (Southern California) region.”
But it might be premature to say we’re hitting a “balance,” especially because the median price reflects an upwardly skewed picture of the market. The real price declines are much worse, says real estate broker Bob Schwartz.
“One thing that those numbers don’t show is the amount of incentives people have to give to get someone to buy their house,” Schwartz says. “On a $500,000 home, you might have to give $15,000 in concessions, which doesn’t show up on the median price.”
Even if we are re-establishing a balance, it might only be the type of balance that a hurricane-battered ship achieves when it suddenly finds itself in the eye of the storm. The ship can stay in balance until the next round of winds hits.
For the San Diego housing market, the winds are already blowing hard.
July 2005 marked the peak of the local housing boom, which was fueled in part by the prevalence of adjustable-rate mortgages with little or no down payments and little solid documentation showing whether the borrowers could afford to pay.
For many borrowers, that meant July was the last month of super-low, two-year “teaser rates” on their mortgage payments. As those payments adjust upward, we can expect a new round of defaults and foreclosures on loans.
This trend will worsen next month, which is the two-year anniversary of the nationwide peak in the housing boom. By October, more than $50 billion worth of adjustable-rate mortgages will require higher monthly payments, and that number is projected to grow by more than $30 billion each month through September 2008, according to the Credit Suisse banking firm.
Because many of the borrowers could scarcely afford to make their payments at the teaser rates, they are going to be in a bigger bind when the rates adjust upward. Even if the Federal Reserve moves to push interest rates lower, many borrowers will be forced to sell their homes at a loss or go into foreclosure.
Already, the number of defaults, foreclosures and bank takeovers in San Diego County has risen immensely, jumping from 5,401 in the first half of 2006 to 18,409 in the first half of 2007, says RealtyTrac, an Irvine-based firm that monitors residential real estate trends.
DataQuick shows a similar trend using different data. DataQuick says that notices of default in San Diego surged in the first half, rising from 3,311 in the January-to-June 2006 period to 8,314 during the same stretch this year.
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