sdcellar, I noticed the spike between 1999 and 2000. We looked at homes in Feb and March 2000 in Gatewood Hills in Rancho Bernardo, in the mid 300’s, which had sold in the mid to high 200s just a few months earlier in the summer of 1999. These were 1800 sq ft homes with backyards only 5-10′ wide. I was really surprised about the sudden jump in price, and didn’t know why it was happening. The realtor kept saying we had low inventory, but I didn’t know why we had low inventory.
I have inventory data for San Diego going back several years, and when you look at the chart, you can see that we had one or two cooling-off periods. Then, something happened to reinvigorate the market. So Robert Campbell was right in some of his incorrect market reversal calls; he really had no way of knowing that the downturn would be reversed by a lower Fed funds rate and the popularity of exotic loans.
