San Diego Housing Bubble News and Analysis

city-data.com gives you the income per zip code. not historical though.

top 4 areas per median household income in SD:

1. RSF at ~$240k
2. La Jolla at ~$170k
3. Carmel Valley at ~$128k
4. Scripps Ranch at ~$122k

Dig around on profilewarehouse.sandag.org. You can find median incomes and median prices for 2000 and median incomes for 2008 down to census tract level (census tracts are smaller than zip codes).

These kinds of comparisons are tricky. You'll want to focus on neighborhoods without apartments. Incomes of apartment residents have no relation to purchasing power of local homebuyers. That's why census tracts are better than zip codes.

In 2000 most places were at 3.5-4.5 times household incomes. Interest rates were 7% and higher.

In established neighborhoods it's important to correct for the number of retirees. Take census tract 83.06 (southwest corner of University City). 99% single-family detached, median income: 76K, median house value: 358K, ratio: 4.7 (as of 2000). That's barely affordable by today's standards. Definitely not with 7.5% interest rates back then. What's the catch? The catch is that University City is an established neighborhood, built in the 60's. In 2000, more than 20% of residents were older than 65. 25% of households lived on retirement income and social security. Median new homebuyer income must have been closer to 100K.

SANDAG currently estimates that median household income in 83.06 is 107K. At 4.7 ratio that would mean median house price 503K (not taking lower interest rates into account). There were 11 sales in the neighborhood in the last 6 months, median sales price was 585K.

Eugene - thanks for pointing to that link.
As a UC resident (on the southeast side) I can relate to what you say about longer term residents having bought for a lot less... My dad bought in UC in '65 for $29k. Ironically, it was a foreclosure and he was able to assume the 2 year old mortgage with no down... The same house is worth over $600k today. And many of the neighbors are original owners. There's a big income gap between people who bought over the past few years and those that bought 40 years ago and are retired.

"Hosing prices"

Freudian slip if there ever was one.

yahoo real estate has a neighborhood info tab that brings you here. They seem to merge census data into r/e data, taken from sperlings

http://realestate.yahoo.com/neighborhood...

going to sperlings directly seems to yield better info, it breaks it down by zip code, gives some historical info and tells you the percentage drop in median from the prior year, unfortunately it doesn't go further, you can get specific property history elsewhere. I do like sperlings data on the housing stock, you can pick specific tabs on the zip code results and under housing it has vacancy rates, ownership rates and a percentage break down of when the houses were built within that zip. Some of the other data is weak, surf at your own risk.

I make between La Jolla and Carmel valley but yet I can't afford any of those houses even after 20% down. We are talking about $750-1.0 MM houses there.

What gives?

Can you afford a condo in La Jolla? 57% of households in La Jolla live in condos and apartments. At this moment there are 38 condos listed for sale in La Jolla below 400K.

I don't think you'll find anyone here who disagrees with that.

Rich

No plan to move back into condo, even if it's in La Jolla area...

I think Eugene's point is that if you make the median income in La Jolla, you probably live in a condo because that is what you can afford.