The Voice has another housing-related piece today, this one on the burgeoning condo oversupply in downtown San Diego.
As Premium users learned a couple months back, downtown (otherwise known as Craneville, CA) has an 18 month inventory of condos listed for resale on the MLS. This means that at the rate at which sales took place in 2005, it would take 18 months for all the resale condos to be sold. This doesn’t even include new non-MLS listed condos that may be for sale, nor does it include condos under construction that may come online for sale during the next 18 months.
Local housing analyst Russ Valone gives us a flavor for just how many condos are set to hit the market in the future:
[T]here are currently 52 residential projects underway in downtown San Diego, comprising a total of 11,000 condo units either being planned or under construction. That figure dwarfs the total amount of inhabited condos in downtown at the moment. Valone estimates downtown hosts 7,500 condos currently.
To put this figure in further perspective, DataQuick indicates that downtown averaged fewer than 30 condo sales per month in 2005.
You read that right. 30 sales per month, with over 500 units for sale now and 11,000 in the pipeline. That, my friends, is what we call a "glut."
January 27, 2006 @ 9:24 AM
Lew Breeze, the realtor
Lew Breeze, the realtor mentioned in the Voice of San Diego article, wrote to me that he agrees there is no housing shortage. Now we know why.
January 27, 2006 @ 9:53 AM
Put aside all of the fancy
Put aside all of the fancy charts and graphs and data. I just don’t see how it is possible that a crash in prices of condos downtown would not ripple out to the rest of the San Diego real estate market.
“End of line.”