Real Estate Trends August 2007
Bob Weurding, Broker Associate
Keller Williams Realty
It is so frustrating to be listening to, or reading the news and know you are only getting half the story. There seems to be a lot of that happening in the news these days. Let me give you an example: Existing home sales for the nation in 2006 totaled 6.48 million and are expected to only be 6.04 million in 2007. This is down 6.8% from 2006 and will be the lowest total since 2002. All true, but the part of the story that is missing is the fact that 2006 was the 4th best year since 1941 for real estate!
Housing starts are down for 2007, and the number of defaulted sub prime mortgages that are behind 60+ days has doubled from the 8.3% in 2006. Again all true, however 2007 is on track to be the 6th best year in history! Applications for home loans has risen 8.1% for three consecutive weeks and the Mortgage Index rose to 656.5, up 18% from last year.
When the media quotes national averages, or for that matter county totals, they rarely tell the story in our local marketplace. NAR (National Association of Realtors) is expecting the real estate market to turn around and head back up in 2008. They are also expecting the nationwide median price on existing homes to equal $223,600, or up 1.96% from $219,300 in 2007. First of all, when was the last time you saw a SFR property for less than $400,000, let alone $223,600?
With all of this having been said, let’s see how our local I15 market is shaping up. The number of home sales in the county are off by 14.8% while the “average” sales price is up 2.78%. Poway is having the hardest time in 2007. The number of sales are off by 10.75% and the average sales price is down 11.4% during the first seven months of the year when compared to the same period in 2006.
RB 92127 is not only experiencing an increase in the average sales price of 8.99%, they are the only zip code in our market to also have an increase (12.95%) in the total number of sales. RB 92128 has seen a very small (.08%) increase in average sales price, however the number of sales were down by 7.620%. PQ rounds out our local market place with a slight decrease in both average sales price (1.44%) and the number of sales (2.65%).
The point is, the next time you read or hear about the national, or county real estate statistics, they may or may not reflect your neighborhood. For more accurate information contact a Realtor who keeps track of the sales in your neighborhood, it might not be as bad as you think.
Source: Sandicor, MLS, and Dataquick
