The average San Diego home is worth less now than it was a year ago. That’s the message that can be inferred from statistics released this morning by DataQuick Information Systems.
The median price of homes sold in San Diego last month was $488,000. That’s 1 percent less than the median price of homes sold in June 2005.
Year-on-year price changes are considered by the real estate industry to be the best indication of how home values are faring. The year-on-year drop is particularly significant because year-on-year price increases have been consistently touted by the real estate industry as evidence that the local home market is still in good shape.
That’s despite record numbers of homes for sale in the county. According to ZipRealty, a real estate brokerage firm, there are currently 22,865 homes listed for sale on the local Multiple Listings Service.
The year-on-year price increases have been eroding every month since October 2004. Last month, median prices were up just 0.4 percent from the year before, and experts were expecting that figure to go negative this month. This marks the first time in 10 years that home prices have experienced a year-on-year decrease.
The DataQuick figures showed a slight uptick in sales activity from May to June. In June there were 4,301 sales, up from 4,217 in May, an increase of 2 percent. However, June sales were down 24 percent from June 2005.
Sales have been stagnant for the first six months of the year, which are normally the busiest months of the year for Realtors. In the first six months of 2005, there were 33,096 sales. By comparison, there were 21,997 sales in the first six months of 2006. That’s a drop of 34 percent.
More to come on this later.