Late June -- Early July

As I have noted before, San Diego does not have a real estate market – neighborhoods have markets.

Hidden Meadows has a cold market – 92128 in Rancho Bernardo has a normally warm market.

Location, location, location.

Basically, Jean and I get 10 times the number of prospects touring an Open House than we do in Hidden Meadows, and in each case that traffic is about 1/10th what it was just two yars ago.

Both of the inventories (Hidden meadows and 92128 RB) are the highest in modern history. There is a slight difference in the demographics and psycographics of prospects. RB where the prospects are younger, and many are renters.

Obviously, the younger crowd have an incentive – the Poway Unified School District, which is very good. (Only by California standards!)

We in Hidden Meadows don’t have either a cadre of nearby renters, or an internal and huge industrial center, or an education district to which people are willing to move to help their children. Consequently, in spite of our idyllic lifestyle we enjoy, we are limited to those who happen to find our community through a round of golf, or while visiting friends.

We now have a large inventory in the Meadows, and we do not have even a “normal” numbers o0f people looking for a home.

And, we have a disproportionate number of vacant homes on the market.

This portends lower prices.

June Market Tea-leaf Readings

June Market Comments

In the past 70 days we have had four home reach “Pending” status – while 30 homes were new listings – that is the sign of a really bad local market.

Our Open Houses have generated an average of just one drop-in a day – while in Rancho Bernardo we have been averaging six on Saturday and twelve on Sunday.

That is a good indication that real estate markets are local. Rancho Bernardo, and for that matter Encinitas, are still showing an increase in inventory – just not so badly as is Hidden Meadows.

I continually track zip code 92128 in Rancho Bernardo because our RB office has listings there. I have seen the inventory go from 168 in January to 217 today – and I have seen as high as 219.

More importantly, the people I have seen in RB during Open House have been (semi) serious Buyers – and many of them are renters. That is promising.

Good weather gives us some hope of a better future, but it will still take several weeks to read the tea leaves.