A pet peeve of mine: Monthly median zip-code numbers !
These monthly zip-code specific median prices are extremely noisy. Taken in isolation they do not provide an accurate measure of the change in the price of houses.
One must look at the trend and smooth month-to-month fluctuations and consider the amount of noise in the statistic.
The 32% decline from June 2007- June 2008 is not necessarily indicative, because the monthly median is such a noisy indicator.
Consider the March 2008 numbers from the same source. March 2008 saw a 46% increase in the price in La Jolla. I don;t believe that was indicative of the market at that point in time either.
See the La Jolla monthly median chart below. The month-to-month measure is extremely noisy. Differences of month-to-month figures (e.g. year-over-year) are even noisier because you are differencing two noisy variables (ask someone with a background in statistics if you don’t get this.)
Based on the trends plotted, and accounting for noise in the measurements, I’d estimate that La Jolla SFRs are down between 16% to 22% from the
peak in late 2005 (most of which is in the last 12-18 months) and trending down.
[img_assist|nid=8416|title=La Jolla monthly medians – DataQuick as reported by signonsandiego.com|desc=|link=node|align=left|width=100|height=75]
