Silent Spring

The typical spring home price rally was a no-show for 2008, if the size-adjusted median price of resale San Diego homes is to be believed. By that measure, single family home prices fell by 2.1 percent and condo prices by 5.8 percent between May and June. A volume-weighted aggregate of the two fell by 3.3 percent for the month.

Since the series peak in September 2005, the size-adjusted median price — which is a slightly shorter way of describing the median price per square foot — has fallen 29.5 percent for resale single family homes, 36.4 percent for resale condos, and 31.9 percent in aggregate.

The recent shift in buyer preference towards lower-priced properties may be causing some distortion in the size-adjusted median because it doesn’t account for quality of the properties sold, except inasmuch as quality can be measured by square footage. So the price of a given home may or may not have fallen to the same degree as the size-adjusted median (and that’s without even considering the vast price change disparities seen from one locality to the next).

However, this data suggests that as a whole, springtime has come and gone for San Diego without a price rally to show for it.

— RICH TOSCANO

Leave a comment