Wednesday, February 21, 2007

Counties' Prices and Sales


I plotted the number sold (left axis) and median price (right axis) from the DataQuick monthly stats for the 4 southern California coastal counties (click to enlarge).

Generally the rise appears in the first half of a year, with more of a plateau the second half.

You see San Diego prices peaked first, in late 2005. Ventura was next in mid-2006. Orange perhaps had a double-peak in latter 2006. Los Angeles' overall median is still rising, but the Westside has been pretty flat since 2005. Sales volume in all 4 counties have been falling since 2005.

Do San Diego, Ventura, and Orange County prices appear poised for a bigger fall?

5 comments:

Craig said...

We are getting hammered here in San Diego...The whole environment is such a joke because while San Diego is beautiful and not as crowded, the job opportunities and salaries are NOT comparable to Los Angeles at all. The entire economy in San Diego runs on real estate and it is going to be getting really ugly as things unwind further. At least Los Angeles has more/higher paying jobs...but still, I looked at some Santa Monica condos around 18th-20th Street a few blocks south of Montana just for fun and they are feeling the pain. Places were dead and the sellers were always "very willing to negotiate". But what joke, who can afford a small 2 bedroom condo for $800K?? This was a few months back, but one of them even had fliers on the table with an article saying that the weakness in the market right now is a great buying opportunity. Why can't people understand that after the greatest run up in history, 6 months of weakness does NOT equal a buying opportunity. This entire bubble has made me question intelligence on a mass scale.

Anonymous said...

Glad to see you writing a Westside Bubbble Blog - I am an almost daily visitor to the OC Flip Track and Irvine Housing Blog along with San Diego blogs, Calculated Risk etc. I have been waiting for someone to tackle this area. I live in Culver City - where prices have been holding steady and still obscenely high. I'm living in a house valued at over a million paying a rent that is one-third what a mortgage would be. It's frustrating to make enough money to buy a house almost anywhere else in the country except where I actually live!

I look forward to your commentary and hope you'll cover Culver City. I occasionally post some housing info on my site under my Bubbleishis category, but I don't seem to have the dogged persistance of true bubble bloggers ;-)

Westside Bubble said...

Thanks, Vera! I'm going to spend more time on your websites and add a link here. Your example house reminds me of Marinite's "Marin POS" blog.

Culver City has felt to me like a small town surrounded by Los Angeles, trying to keep it that way. With nice things happening downtown.

I don't know its real estate in detail. I'll cover available houses and other stats that look useful. Other suggestions?

Dogged persistence ... yeah, guess I've been following the bubble so closely, that I finally had enough to say I had to blog about it myself.

Anonymous said...

My friend the realtor says "Things are heating up on the Westside." Not sure exactly what that means....prices or activity.

Dr Housing Bubble said...

Nice data gathering. LA inventory has gone up but amazingly prices have remained resistant. Look at San Diego, Ventura, and even the OC and LA remains the outlier. It’ll be interesting to see how the Westside tackles the housing bubble.