Saturday, December 20, 2008

The California report

Here's the latest Dataquick report for the state. No news here, the numbers are ugly. Sales are down 25% month to month and the median price is down over 7% month to month. Those are some BAD numbers folks!


An estimated 32,163 new and resale houses and condos were sold statewide last month. That was down 24.0 percent from 42,293 in October and up 25.7 percent from 25,578 for November last year. Sales have increased on a year-over-year basis the last five months. California sales for the month of November have varied from last year's low to a peak of 60,326 in 2004, the average is 40,592. MDA DataQuick's statistics go back to 1988.

The median price paid for a home last month was $258,000, down 7.2 percent from $278,000 for the month before, and down 37.7 percent from $414,000 for November a year ago. Around half the drop in median is due to depreciation, the other half due to shifts in the types of homes selling, and how those homes are financed.

The typical mortgage payment that home buyers committed themselves to paying last month was $1,198. That was down from $1,310 in October, and down from $1,951 for November a year ago. Adjusted for inflation, mortgage payments are back to where they were in spring 1999. They are 40.3 percent below the spring 1989 peak of the prior real estate cycle. They are 51.8 percent below the current cycle's peak in June 2006.

4 comments:

Unknown said...

What was the Spring 89 mortgage peak?

golfer_X said...

The top of the last real estate bubble was from 89 to 91 depending on the area. The IE peaked around 91 and bottomed out in 97. From 97 to 2001 it rose at a good clip and in 2002 it took off like a missile. You know the rest!

Unknown said...

I'm sorry; I meant what was the average mortgage amount during the Spring 89 peak? In dollars . . . .
Love this blog by the way.

golfer_X said...

The IE median peaked in 92 at around $136k. It hit bottom in 96 at $114K. The median price in 89 was $124k. I don't know what the average mortgage amount was. But most people back in those days actually made down payments so the average mortgage amount was probably a good deal less than $124k. But interest rates were much higher in 89 (around 10%). So the payments were much higher back then on a similar loan amount as compared to today's payments (especially if you adjust for inflation).