OK Aecitia, I was a little harsh, but it was meant in good fun, Harry, my apologies. However Tobin is even a better school than the ones I mentioned, that’s a 900 API, they could probably benefit from a little diversity. I can tell you that I live within walking distance of Tobin, I am a morganite, and you can stop worrying, it’s fine, in fact it’s almost to the point that I am about to call bottom, actually at the end of this diatribe I will.
Just like carlsbadworker pointed out, inventory is very low. I’ve seen reports that it is under 6 months but I believe those numbers are too high. I ran 92592, 446 listings, of that only 199 are not short sales. Shorts are really hard to use for stats because they can be in escrow and they don’t change the status to “backup offer” because of the time it takes to get an answer from the bank and offers on shorts are not binding. In a nutshell, you can make an offer on a short and after the bank agrees, you can say no, so the agent tries to get as many offers as possible. There are usually a bunch of offers on each short by the time you look at them and they will show as active for the six months the bank is thinking about it.
Redfin now allows you to pick “exclude short sales.” So I did, 199 listings in 92592 and 80 in 92591 that aren’t shorts and aren’t already under contract. This is for houses and condos, in all price categories combined. 279 total lstings, normal listings and bank owned combined, that’s it, for a city of 100k. That is about a 6 week supply of houses that you can actually make an offer on and move into in a month or two, and of those I’ll be willing to bet some have offers already in play, realtors don’t rush to change the status because they can get leads that way. Right now, Morgan hill has 5 listings that aren’t shorts. Redhawk has 17, Vail Ranch 8, Wolf creek 7. 92592 is averaging 40 closings a week! We need the shadow inventory to surface just to meet demand, and I see less dead lawns than I did last year, I think the loan mods might be taking hold or we already peaked and such a huge percentage of the bubble bought homes have already changed hands. The three car garage monitor now stands at 71 (homes in 92592 with 3 car garages under 400k), the lowest in a while, it was in the triple digit range in 2008 and very few were shorts then, now that about all that is left.
So I’m calling Temecula’s bottom right now! I’ve never called it before but I’m calling it now. Some of my relatives and friends managed to pick up some cash flow positive rentals and the ones that were outbid have been complaining that they missed the boat, that there are more buyers and less listings every day. I’m not claiming a rebound will happen tomorrow but I’ve watched my micromarket more than anyone I have ever met even though I am not in the industry and I say that when the supposed shadow inventory does hit this summer as many believe it will, that will be your last chance. If the government prevents it from hitting, then you missed it, that’s my final answer.
