What a crazy year this has been so far.  Most San Diego County Realtors entered the year with confidence that the market was turning into something short of a boom but far from bust. Potential buyers were plentiful and San Diego Real Estate seemed ready to begin a new rally of buyer demand.  Then, along came the news of mortgage woes and foreclosure rate acceleration to put water on the forming flames.

Nobady likes bad news and least of all potential home buyers, making the biggest investment of their lives with doubts of a San DIego Real Estate market and how foreclosures could effect values. Speaking to numerous Realtors the story is the same.....many interested and willing buyers waiting tfor good news to pull the trigger.  For those on the sidelines but poised to jump in on that perfect home.....opportunities await. For those that have left the market out of fear....some great opportunities will pass them by.

Like most markets, .the stock market especially, rallies tend to follow on the heals of the darkest hour . Are we at our darkest hour yet? The picture the media seems to paint is that the "markets are crashing.", ".foreclosures are double what they were a year ago" and so on and so on. Those would seem to be dark times indeed......next post will examine the foreclosure and market conditions in more detail. 

If you are a home buyer trying to make sense of the chaos which seems to be the real estate market lately what do you make of constant flow of bad real estate news? New home sales are down. Existing  homes sale are down. Even the overly optimistic National Association of Realtors is delaying any expectations of a housing recovery until late 2008 for most of US.

The California Association of Realtors predicts 2008 will show modest declines in value over all with most of the stress falling on affordable areas like the Central Valley and the Inland Empire.  Interestlngly, although CAR economists project a 23 percent decline in sales in 2007 to 367,500 units compared with 2006, they are forecating a 3.5 percent increase in the statewide median price to $576,000.

It would appear markets like the San Francico Bay area, Orange County and San DIego are providing statistical stability to hard hit areas of the State.  According to CAR Vice President and Chief Economist Leslie Appleton-Young. “Higher priced regions of the state, such as the San Francisco Bay Area and parts of San Diego, Los Angeles, and Orange counties will react more to affordability constraints.  By price-range, the highest-priced markets will show less stress,” she says.

For most of the San DIego Real Estate listings  that is good news and we have seen that prices have remained stable in the midst of the sub prime mortgage crisis and increased foreclosure rates which have affected the more affordble areas of the state. 

An overall view of statistics for California....... the last time the sales level fell below 2007’s projected 367,500 units occurred in 1995, when annual sales totaled 342,540 units, according to CAR figures. Sales last fell below 2008’s 334,500-unit forecast in 1985, with 328,270 units, the association says. 1995 and 1985 both preceeded huge gains in the real estate market that began the following year.

Translation.....if you plan to be in your next home for 3 years or more and you are buying in the San Diego market,  history demonstates that you are safe and, in fact, should profit well.