If you were listening to the real estate "rose-colored glasses "crowd, in 2006 you would have heard "It's not a slowdown and there is NO bubble. The San Diego market is just going back to 'normal.' It's an excellent time to buy with out the market frenzy of multiple offers & buyers paying over the asking prices."
In 2007 you would have heard, "It's a normal correction to a buyer's market. Many great San Diego home buys, compared to the past year or two, are available if you act fast.
In 2008 (early August '08) the headline in the San Diego Buying Guide read: "Buyers are out in record numbers." Question: Record numbers compared to what time frame? Perhaps a more appropriate headline would have been: "San Diego buyer’s activity increasing because of demand for foreclosure & short sale properties at 40 to 50% below their 2005 highs."
Therefore, in my humble opinion, the #1 key for buying a home in San Diego today, is waiting patiently for the market to tell you that it has bottomed. I'm not talking about a one or two month blip here, or the Industry talking heads saying to act fast, but real, documented facts of a bottoming process occurring.
Sure, you might lose some of the upside, but you would be able to sleep at night. Buying simply because property looks cheap as opposed to last week, last month or the last year, is the majority thinking. With that reasoning, you would be have been buying all the way down in 2006, 2007 & 2008.
I would venture to say the vast majority of San Diego home buyers in the first quarter of this year have seen their 'great buys' suddenly not looking so great. Not considering closing cost, I'd guess the majority who purchased property in the last quarter of 2007 or first quarter of 2008 who had to sell today, would suffer a significant loss. As just one example, the July '08 condo average re-sales for the San Diego Zip code 92115 showed a value drop of over 50% vs. July 2007.
A few of our recent past posts on the state of the San Diego real estate market were:
San Diego California Home Sellers Lose Big
The San Diego California Real Estate Great Depression
Believe the local San Diego ‘experts’ that subprime delinquencies are slowing?
San Diego County Foreclosures up 125% from 2007
Jumbo Financing and the Impact on The San Diego Real Estate Market
Another Look at the June Rise in Pending Home Sales
San Diego real estate home sales
If you are going to buy a home that you are planning on living in, buy one that you can afford, taxes and insurance and maintenance included. The “asking” price does not tell the whole story, nor does the “adjustable” loan. People paid too much thinking they could flip the house, found no buyer and the adjustable loan was “adjusting”, just like they’d been warned. Of course, no one fore saw the gas prices, the electricity prices, the food prices going through the roof, and all the unemployment.
San Diego Real Estate Agents
I think that in the long run, everything will probably be okay. The government will save us.
Oakland Attorney
This is the result of cooking the books to give home loans to people who otherwise couldn’t even get a car loan. The lenders and the borrowers are equally to blame. They created the bubble that burst- and who are the true victims?– those of us who could actually qualify for the loan and are still making house payments and homes that are rapidly depreciated due to the crooks and liars who cooked the books.
LA Bail
I guess this is going to become less actual because of the world financial depression, what do you think?