San Diego Housing Bubble News and Analysis

Once again, time to take a look at the sales volumes for SFRs and condos as reported through Sandicor MLS. As usual, I'd remind everyone that the final numbers for July won't post for a couple weeks yet because some agents are slackers and they don't update their listings in a timely manner. Based on months past, the number for this month may increase by 8% or 9% before it's all over.

This month, I thought I'd do someting a little different and show the cumulative totals for the year:

Mo...2006...2007......% Change

Jan..1889...1748.........-7%
Feb..1917...1845.........-4%
Mar..2909...2405........-17%
Apr..2623...2376.........-9%
May..2942...2332........-21%
Jun..3039...2439........-20%
Jul..2443...1936/2110*..-14%

Tot.17762..15255........-14%

As can be seen above there is some fluctuation on a month-month basis, but the overall trends are pretty clear - 2007 is shaping up to be a fair bit worse than 2006. The single digit decreases in Jan, Feb and Apr have kept the average to only 14%, but I can envision the overall average for the year could shake out somewhere between 15% - 18% or so less than 2006. The final tally for 2006 totalled 29,086 SFR+condos, so a 15% decrease from that would result in a 24,723 year for 2007, and an 18% decrease would equal 23,850.

FYI, 1997 had 27,200 sales and 1996 had 22,800 sales through the MLS, so an 18% decline for 2007 is encroaching on the worst year in the last 18 years. It would be the worst year for sales if you consider we've added almost 10% more units to our totals over the last 10 years.

Another note, even when considering the current events in the financing world, I would think a 20% decline in overall volume is a long shot at this point. Average monthly volumes for the last 5 months of the year would have to undercut the 2006 numbers by ~28% in order for that to happen - that's unlikely.

Of course, the way things are going I'm thinking 2007 might end up looking pretty good compared to 2008.