San Diego is My Home

14
Nov

San Diego Housing

Author: HelenKay, Category: Neighborhoods, News

Unless you’re living in a box and haven’t seen a newspaper, the television news or all of the “for sale” signs in your neighborhood during the last 12 months, you know something is happening in the housing market…something very bad.  There is a lot of talk of doom and foreclosure.  Houses are sitting on the market and not selling.  Lenders are in trouble due to some of the ridiculous loans made over the last few years.  People are losing their houses.  If you;re lucky enough to still have a home, you almost hate to leave it in the morning.

Local real estate agents are saying the end is not yet in sight.  Median prices for resale houses (ie, not new ones) dropped from$535,000 in Oct. ‘06 to $515,000 in Oct. ‘07.  Bad news, right?  Well, yeah, but we’re talking about half a million dollars for a 900 square foot box with a view of an alley.  One could argue the housing costs here still hover in the ridiculously insane range.    The median income in San Diego is something like $100,000.  Note how the housing costs are more than 5x that income level.  Unless people are going without water and have figured out a way to also eat their homes, it’s hard to imagine how that monthly mortgage could get paid.

So, what’s the upside?  Unless you’re a buyer with a crystal clean credit record and a wad of cash balled in your tight little fist there likely isn’t one.  At least not yet.  But, predictions are that things will turn around in 2009.  It’s part of the inevitable cycle.  At least we hope so.