May Real Estate Statistics for San Diego County

With all that’s been going on with real estate legislation and home buyer seminars, it’s been a while since we’ve updated you on the basic ups and downs of the local real estate situation. Now that we’ve reached the midpoint of 2009, it seems like an appropriate time to do so.

If you remember from our San Diego Real Estate Trends article in January, we started off 2009 with a median price of $190,000 for attached properties (condos and townhouses) and $327,000 for detached properties (single-family homes). The price went down 5 and 6 percent, respectively, since December and many were forecasting a continuous downward spiral for 2009. As predicted, attached and detached homes hit their lowest points for 2009 in March at $175,750 for attached homes and $325,000 for detached homes.

But it’s not all bad news, because for the past two months we have seen an increase in the median pricing for both detached and attached homes. In fact, just last month, the median sales price for attached homes saw a surge of 13 percent. At the end of May, it was $204,000, up 14 percent from the year’s low point.

Detached homes saw an increase this month as well, making the May median price $340,000. This is up 4.5 percent from its lowest point in March. It’s safe to say we’re seeing a positive trend that we look forward to continuing in the coming months.

In other good news, 2009 is still showing a 35 percent increase in number of sold listings from 2008. Although May saw a slight decrease in sold listings, the overall number of sales still points to a strong upward trend. To that point, there were many pockets within the county that still saw an increase of sales this month including: Chula Vista, Otay Mesa, Spring Valley, Escondido, Vista, Encanto, and Paradise Hills, among others

So what does all this mean? Median sales price is rising and number of sold listings is still up. Is the worst over? Well, we can never say for sure, but it does seem to look that way. These last two months are definitely keeping us optimistic about the long-term health of our local real estate market. We’ll keep you informed on the progress. Learn more at SDAR.com.

- San Diego Association of REALTORS® President, Erik Weichelt