Think again PC! We are 15% below 2004 prices. The 2005 prices and the 2004 prices were pretty much the same.
This is where its gets fuzzy. 2003 prices for these homes were in the low 500’s with the last sale happening in Late Summer. Price jumped about $100K between Sept 2003 and Feb 2004 with very low volume. Jumps like this happened just about everywhere in SD County so very few people actually paid prices between a fairly big range (in this case between the low 500’s and low 600’s). If we get back to the low 500’s in this case we will be about 30% off the peak in nominal terms. Throw in 4 years of inflation and the real decline is a bit more. Waiting for 2000 nominal prices will leave you a renter for life IMHO. I’m not saying jump now but I believe these houses wont see the low 300’s (2000 prices in nominal terms). That would represent a real decline of over 60%.
