San Diego Homes Prices & Inventory Supply - January 2022 to January 2023

[Steve Meyers]

Hi All,

I've been getting a lot of questions regarding the San Diego market in particular and where prices are going etc so I wanted to pull the most recent data to compare last year's January to this one.

All properties saw an increase of 9.5% in prices from January 22 to January 23 which is displayed on the graph below.  

I also pulled inventory numbers by price point in the second graph below.  The average home price in San Diego is about $840K which currently has about a .9 month supply up .3 from last year.  

I'm going to be watching this month over month to see where inventory numbers go but I wanted to post about this because there have been a lot of media companies (Goldman Sachs) out there that put San Diego in their headlines as one of the markets to take a hit in prices, but I don't see it happening anytime soon unless we really see an increase in our inventory supply.  A lot of these media companies are just putting headlines out there for click bait and not actually looking at the data.

Demand for San Diego housing has and will continue to be one of the most desirable and competitive markets in the US.

[Dan H.]

Core Logic lists San Diego RE prices down 8% since May (but still up YOY for January).  May is traditionally higher price than January, so clearly it is less than 8% decline but the true decline may not be known until May.  I suspect it will be down YOY by March and possibly down 3 to 5% YOY by May.

Regardless, the San Diego RE prices do not seem to be as impacted as some dire predictions.  For my part, I advocated caution and have not purchased anything since December 2021 (I purchased $4M that month so that could keep me busy for a bit).  Looking at my expected 3 to 5% YOY at May (market high May 2022), I may have been overly cautious, but I would rather be overly cautious than too aggressive.  I am still proceeding with caution. The fed has not finished raising rates to slow the economy.  If the feds get this perfect, hats off to them but it is not an easy thing to do.  They are more likely to over correct than get it right for no other reason than over correction is perceived to have less severe consequences than under correcting.