When you go to a site like this: http://www.benengebreth.org/housingtracker/
and it gives the inventories for different cities I always wonder if that includes the suburbs?
For example:
San Diego has an inventory of 15,402 – does that just mean inventory within the city limits.
and
Phoenix has 27,328
If these figures just include the inventory within the city limits, then it is deceptive because both San Diego and Phoenix are huge metropolitan areas that do not necessairly focus on either city.
But if you were to look at the inventory of, for example, San Francisco (2,518), that’s some information you can relate to because of the defined territory – especially because many people are interested in living in San Francisco. Whereas, I would guess that the majority of the people who live or move to “San Diego” don’t necessairly live in San Diego.
In other words I don’t really care what the inventories are in “San Diego” or “Phoenix” so who cares what their inventories are? More important is the inventories of the entire metropolitan areas because they really are just one huge mass.
A/o this afternoon, ZipRealty says the entire San Diego metro area has 23,474 listings(a healthy bump in the # today BTW), which is about 19,000 MORE than April 2004, when there were roughly 4,000 listings. This certainly does not include all the new construction available for purchase, either.
The count I posted above includes pretty much every city and town in San Diego. What are you driving at, anyway? You can go to http://www.ziprealty.com yourself, you know, and track inventory of whatever you’re interested in for free?
FYI-Trying to pick apart inventory data in an effort to find some sort of glimmer of hope for the “bullish” real estate case will prove futile, if that is what one is up to. Come November, the much-touted median in San Diego County should reflect between 10% and 15% down Y-O-Y. The end of the party is nigh…
on the contrary, I am anything but bullish! it’s just that as far as I am concerned the San Diego Metro area spreads all the way to Temecula now, a link someone else posted didn’t even include Carlsbad as part of San Diego Metro – which to me doesn’t give the whole story of inventory
I see. No, the near quintupling of inventory (mentioned above) is spread out over the same “footprint” of 2 years ago, which does not/did not include Temecula.
I’ve used these sites for some time.
The link you gave is the old version of the site. If you click on San Diego the San Diego page includes the definition of the listing area.
San Diego, California
Including Bonita, Chula Vista, Coronado, Del Mar, Dulzura, El Cajon, Encinitas, Escondido, Imperial Beach, Jamul, La Jolla, La Mesa, Lemon Grove, Leucadia, National City, Ocean Beach, Olivenhain, Pacific Beach, Poway, Rancho Bernardo, San Ysidro, Santee, Spring Valley
The new site http://www.housingtracker.net/
is now using Census defined Metropolitan Statistical Areas for monitoring Inventory and Asking Prices, and better metropolitan area definitions lead to better data.
Again if you click on San Diego it gives a definition:
San Diego, California
The San Diego-Carlsbad-San Marcos Metropolitan Statistical Area (approximation) has 25,534 total listings of which 21,960 are either Single Family or Condo. The area includes the major cities of Carlsbad, Chula Vista, El Cajon, Escondido, La Jolla, La Mesa, Oceanside, San Diego, San Marcos, Spring Valley and many others.
ziprealty does things by counties. and that’s how I’ve been doing my trackings. SD would simply be SD county, without Temecula and Murrieta, which are listed under Riverside county in ziprealty.
counties have well defined borders so tracking of inventory based on counties give you much better consistancy.
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