I have followed your posts on this site as a lurker for quite a while and am a great admirer of your market knowledge and your candor.
I am primarily a business litigation attorney, but am also a licensed real estate broker with a small real estate business and I therefore have MLS access. Because real estate is my main hobby I tend to spend a lot of time (probably way too much) analyzing trends, price changes, etc., and I agree with you that some neighborhoods have already seen as much as 20% depreciation. In particular, the less desirable condos such as those in Mission Valley built in the 1970s, and those in outlying areas (as opposed to Hillcrest/Mission Hills, which seems to be down but not as much) have really plummeted like rocks. For some reason, Kensington/Normal Heights (92116) single-family houses seem to have declined a bit, with really long market times, but for the most part, I think the big drops in SFR prices have only just begun.
Given what you are describing and what I am seeing myself, and given that the monthly median price statistics we get from DataQuick and NAR lag by several months, where do you see the year-to-year median by the end of this year? From what I can tell, this market is slowing dramatically NOW both in terms of sales numbers and price. We didn’t have the huge sales spike in the summer that usually happens, and now we’re headed into the fall with huge and growing inventory levels. I wouldn’t be surprised to see year-over-year median price declines well above 5% overall, and in some areas around 10%, by early 2007, with the pace picking up fast from there. Do you agree?
