You are correct that the overall numbers were up 10-30% in general and are now negative in the cited areas. It’s pretty clear in the data that there was a break point sometime in 2005 for some areas.
Generally I agree with your assessments on points 1,2 , 3, &4. But be very very careful when parsing down to the zip code level.
Consider that DQ reported that La Jolla was up 66.8 % in May 2006 over May 2005. And that was on 26 sales!
UP 66.8% WOW !
Dozens of sales in a single month still may not be enough in some cases. You need to smooth out the month-to-month variations.
We should either average over longer periods/larger regions, or consider the time history to get a feel for the amount of variation. The chart below gives a feel for the flucuation in a few of the areas. This is the median price for select zip codes in La Jolla, Point Loma and Poway.
Notice that the fluctuations about the trend lines that I placed are up to +/-20%. I drew in the trend lines to correspond to June-June for each year (Chart covers June 04 through June 05).
As a side note, the coastal zip codes appear to have topped out well before Poway, where the trend (in the rear-view mirror of the median price) was still rising in 2006 and the downturn there will likely just begin to show up over the next few months.
[img_assist|nid=1248|title=Selected Median Prices|desc=|link=node|align=left|width=400|height=300]
