This story in the Los Angeles Times won’t tell the readers of voiceofsandiego.org anything much that they haven’t read before.
The story’s essentially a montage of what we have been harping on about for the last six months: There are a lot of homes for sale, prices are slipping, some analysts are predicting a huge bust and Realtors are smiling and saying everything’s OK.
The Times also decided to give a fair few column inches to our Rich Toscano, a regular voiceofsandiego.org real estate columnist. Rich is currently on a one-month writing hiatus as he sets up shop at a local financial planning firm. He’ll be back to tackle the broader economic issues in San Diego – and he’s setting his sights wider than just real estate.
Here’s a good quote from the article:
“We’ve built a whole economy based on selling each other homes,” the 35-year-old Toscano said. “That’s not sustainable.”
To illustrate his point, he offered a tour of downtown in his silver Miata convertible. Around every corner, it seemed, was another crane putting up another massive condo building. There’s Vantage Pointe, Smart Corner, the Alta, Nexus, the Legend, the Mark. Many will have hundreds of units.
“I’m surprised we haven’t covered all of San Diego with granite countertops by now,” he said.
Sounds just like Rich, doesn’t it?
In addition to swanning around town in Toscano’s sports car, The Times journalist also spent some time with an Ocean Beach Realtor. He points out in the story that the Realtor’s cheer belied the fliers taped to the inside of his storefront window:
In some cases, the prices are dropping faster than the fliers can be reprinted.
A two-bedroom town home has its price of $324,900 crossed out with a marking pen, replaced by $309,900. Another house, a four-bedroom in suburban La Mesa, has a printed price of $575,000.
Below that is handwritten $549,000.
Scribbled below that is a new minimum: $499,000.