San Diego Housing Bubble News and Analysis

Here's a look at monthly house payments (including mortgage and property tax) compared to incomes and rents:

Loads of exposition can be found in the full writeup at voiceofsandiego.org.

I've updated the long-term home price-to-income and price-to-rent charts through June 2008:

The aggregate index was down for another month, dropping by 1.5%. But what's this? The monthly change for the high-tier index doesn't have a minus sign in front of it? I'm confused...

But it's true. The high tier of the Case-Shiller index managed to stage a spring rally. A late one, and a very small one -- but hey, it's something. The high tier rose .3% from June. The middle and low tiers were down, however, 1.6% and 2.4% respectively.

My Case-Shiller proxy, which utilizes the median price per square foot, predicted a 1.6% decline in the overall index for the month vs. the actual 1.5%. So this proxy still seems to be working pretty well, at least for the time being. The aggregate index is down 29.5% from the November 2005 peak.

Some graphs follow: the first two nominal, the second two adjusted for CPI inflation.

I've already wasted a bunch of time tooling around Redfin's new (to me, anyway) neighborhood-specific data pages. They have inventory and price per square foot, among other things, but the cool thing is that it's by neighborhood and not by zip code. They even show you a little map of what they consider the neighborhood.

Don't read too much into these charts, though, because the price per square foot metric is only marginally accurate with these smaller data sets. Still, the charts can be useful in showing the prevailing trend. Perhaps the Redfin charts can supplement pigg esmith's excellent (more accurate, but less neighborhood-y) same-home price data.

The size-adjusted median dropped once again in July -- at least overall.

In my opinion, the only thing classier than a bright yellow Hummer H2 is a bright yellow Hummer H2 with a real estate-themed vanity plate:

Forgive the questionable photo quality, as I took this picture through my driver's side window, on my CrackBerry Cam, while driving on the I-5 at rush hour.

Trust me, though: the plate says "DABROKR."

I am reminded of another vehicle I've seen twice in the past around my neck of the woods. It, too, was a bright yellow Hummer H2, and its license plate was "RENVSTR" ("real estate investor," presumably). I never got a picture, sadly, and come to think of it I haven't seen that vehicle for a couple of years now. Maybe it's been repossessed.

So if your real estate investing career hasn't been as successful as these folks', perhaps the problem is that your vehicle is insufficiently enormous or brightly hued. Or maybe your license plate does not do an adequate job of publicizing your participation in what you apparently did not realize was a gigantic speculative bubble.

Nobody should be surprised to learn that the HPI was down again in May. Here's a view from the peak:

Better late than never? Maybe? Hey, I can't help it if the GSEs go tango-uniform before I get a chance to do the monthly foreclosure charts. Here they are:

I just put a brief writeup about the June employment numbers up at voiceofsandiego.org. The following graph was featured:

Let's do a quick review of the resale data for June.

As in May, the size-adjusted median fared much better for single family homes than for condos:

Sporadic guest pigg Ramsey Su is back with some thoughts on the current housing bailout packages making their way through Congress. Executive summary: he's not a fan. Read on for Ramsey's take on why the bailout proposals are a waste, at best, and likely to do more harm than good.

It was business as usual for the Case-Shiller Index in April, with a fairly steep 2.6% drop in the overall index comprised of progressively worse performance in each lower-price tier. This time, the high tier was down 1.5%, the middle tier 2.7%, and the low tier 3.5%.

Here is a look at the three tiers since the peak. Notice how I keep having to change the scale on the Y axis each month to accommodate the continued whackage on the low tier:

I have just put my writeup on May employment up at voiceofsandiego.org. See that article for the words, and see below for the bonus pigg charts.

Before I begin, an administrative note: I am going to take the Econo-Almanac offline this weekend to upgrade the site software. This should help site performance and will result in some improved functionality as well.

OK, onto the rodeo. May was a bit of a weird month as far as the median price per square foot, known somewhat more briefly as the size-adjusted median, was concerned. In specific, the size-adjusted median for single family homes was completely unchanged from April, whereas it was down a brutal 5.9% for the month for condos.

The 1,762 NOTs delivered in San Diego last month was a new record. NODs were down 5% from April, but May was nonetheless the second-highest month on record.