~Welcome to the Econo-Almanac~

I started this website in mid-2004 to chronicle San Diego’s spectacular housing bubble.  The purpose of the site remains, as ever, to provide objective and evidence-based analysis of the San Diego housing market. A quick guide to the site follows:

  • New visitors are advised to begin with the Bubble Primer or (if wondering about the site name) the FAQ list.
  • Housing articles I’ve written are found in the main section below.
  • Discussion topics posted by site users are found in the “Active Forum Topics” box to the lower right.
  • This website is an avocation; by day I help people with their investments as a financial advisor*.  Market commentary, an overview of our investment approach, and more can be found on my firm's website.

Thanks for stopping by…

Hastening away from affordability -- San Diego housing valuations, Jan 2021

Submitted by Rich Toscano on January 29, 2021 - 5:11pm

The "valuation index" shown below compares San Diego home prices to San Diego rents and per capita income. As of the beginning of 2020, valuations had gone nowhere for 4 years. Then the pandemic hit, and valuations popped 10% in a year. San Diego home prices (as compared to rents and incomes) are easily the highest they've been outside the bubble.



The next chart is similar to the first chart in that it compares to local rents and incomes, but instead of measuring purchase prices, it measures monthly payments (thus including the effect of mortgage rates). This paints a very different picture than the first chart: the rise in monthly payments has been more than offset by the decline in rates! Monthly payment "valuation" is actually lower than it was in early 2020, and was only lower at the depths of the post-bubble housing crash.



Here's a look at how home prices compare to incomes and rents separately.

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December housing graphs - quite a year for San Diego home prices!

Submitted by Rich Toscano on January 25, 2021 - 9:58pm












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October 2020 housing data - still super-low inventory, still rising prices

Submitted by Rich Toscano on November 19, 2020 - 10:01pm
I wanted to begin by noting this article from the great Calculated Risk. It discusses the relationship between months-of-inventory and short-term price changes, and includes a scatter graph between the two. It was this idea from CR that inspired the San Diego version that's become central to the monthly updates here:



(To quickly explain this graph: the red line is the monthly change in the SD Case-Shiller index; the blue line is months of inventory, but inventory is inverted to make the relationship more clear).

This did a pretty good job of mapping the relationship between inventory and prices through the bust and initial recovery, but early in the teens the lines began to drift apart. Pigg reader gzz offered a theory: the arrival of online real estate portals (Redfin etc) sped up the inventory throughput cycle, changing the "equilibrium" amount of inventory in a balanced market. Previously, the equilibrium inventory (the level at which prices were stable) was about 6 months. More recently, it's been closer to 2 1/3 months.



With this adjustment for a faster moving real estate market, months of inventory has done a really good job of calibrating where we are on supply vs. demand (and thus, upward vs. downward price pressure).

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September 2020 housing data -- more of the same

Submitted by Rich Toscano on October 9, 2020 - 2:46pm
September pretty much looked like August -- sales steady, inventory even a bit lower, and prices popping in response to the low supply/high demand. Charts below...







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August 2020 Housing data -- prices react to inventory shortfall

Submitted by Rich Toscano on September 14, 2020 - 1:36pm
Last month, inventory dropped to the lowest it's been since the bubble. Prices have moved up in response.

Sales continue to be strong... nothing spectacular, but showing no weakness at all:





Meanwhile, available inventory has dropped off a cliff:



The result: super low months of inventory:



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July 2020 housing data -- inventory hits a new low

Submitted by Rich Toscano on August 16, 2020 - 5:17pm
There just isn't much to buy out there.

Sales are strong, but nothing crazy, when you consider the rebound from the lockdown:





But inventory is the lowest it's been since the post-bubble bull market got started:



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May 2020 housing charts

Submitted by Rich Toscano on June 22, 2020 - 9:12pm





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April 2020 housing charts

Submitted by Rich Toscano on May 20, 2020 - 8:38pm





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March 2020 housing data

Submitted by Rich Toscano on April 20, 2020 - 8:55pm
Hello friends, sorry for the delay on this.

For the month of March, things looked pretty normal-ish, except for pendings, see right below. Which all kind of makes sense given the timing of the lockdown.




The April numbers will likely look a little weirder than March. In the meantime, user sdrealtor has been posting some updates from the trenches over on the previous data update; see the comments at the bottom. It sounds like the market is pretty resilient, from what he is seeing.

Graphs below and more to come when the April numbers are available...
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December 2019 housing graphs

Submitted by Rich Toscano on January 21, 2020 - 9:22pm
Well, here's how the stats looked for the year:



Quite a change from December 2019, notably with months of inventory down 36%. It's no coincidence this took place alongside a steep drop in interest rates. I think the behavior of the past 2 years -- the rapid  slowdown when rates rose, followed by a rebound when rates fell again -- makes it pretty clear that the housing market is very much beholden to continued low rates.

Here is what I believe to be the best indicator of short term market strength -- months of inventory (number of homes for sale divided by the number of pending sales in a given month).



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October 2019 Housing Graphs

Submitted by Rich Toscano on November 17, 2019 - 2:41pm






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September 2019 housing data: prices pull back but supply remains low

Submitted by Rich Toscano on October 11, 2019 - 4:07pm
A summary of last month in 2 charts:

1. Prices eased off



2. But months-of-inventory remains low, and supportive of somewhat higher prices. Unless that changes, I wouldn't expect anything like the price decline we saw at this time last year:



More graphs below!
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July 2019 housing data

Submitted by Rich Toscano on August 23, 2019 - 3:05pm
Just the graphs this month, my friends...





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Shambling a tiny, halting step towards affordability

Submitted by Rich Toscano on August 6, 2019 - 1:50pm

Below is a San Diego housing update my financial planning firm sent to our clients and friends. (If you'd like to sign up for our quarterly updates, you can do so here). Stick around for some bonus pigg-only graphs at the end.


Measuring housing expensiveness

We all know that buying a home in San Diego costs a lot more than in most cities. But that's always been the case, and probably always will be, because San Diego is such a desirable place to live. More interesting is the question of how expensive San Diego is compared to its own history. This can tell us whether prices are out of whack even after adjusting for the desirability factor.

A good way to measure housing expensiveness is to compare home prices to local rents and incomes. Rents tell us how much it costs to live in San Diego as a non-owner, while incomes show how much money San Diegans have to spend on housing.[1] By comparing home prices to rents and incomes, we can get an idea of their cheapness or expensiveness relative to the economic factors that typically drive them. (This is also known as their "valuation").

Here's a chart of San Diego housing valuation since the late 1970s:



 
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June 2019 housing data

Submitted by Rich Toscano on July 8, 2019 - 5:50pm
There was a bit of in increase in months of inventory in June, but it seems pretty par for the course for this time of year:



If rates stay nice and low, I expect that the trajectory of the 2019 line will end up looking more like 2016-17 than 2018. (And if they don't... well then it's probably the 2018 route).

Here's a look at price changes vs. inverted month of inventory, still tracking quite well on the assumption that 2.5 months is the "new normal" equilibrium level of inventory.



Price-wise, we are right back at peak levels, in nominal terms.



In valuation terms we are still below last year's peak, but I will soon have more on that. In the meantime, more graphs below!

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