Icon in East Village, the Tilted Kilt

Downtown San Diego has posted a slight increase in median home prices for 2008. 92101 is up 7.4% from 2007 prices, despite having a higher than normal amount of unsold inventory. The median price for 2008 was $522,000 compared with $486,000 for 2007.  Home sales were down from 1,331 to 1,061.

Looking closer at each building, you can find distinctly different stories. While some buildings were closing escrows from pre-sell days in 2005/ 2006, other buildings are struggling with high levels of defaults and HOA’s on the brink of being upside down  – and are down from 2007 prices.  Some of struggling HOA’s are actually compounding the downward price pressure by making it difficult for low down payment buyers to obtain financing. Other projects, like Icon (pictured) have been in a builder blow out phase slashing prices in some cases by $100,000.

All in all, however, Downtown San Diego condos have faired well relative to other parts of the County that have seen 40% + declines in value.

The majority of bank owned sales are falling into the entry level range of homes in Downtown San Diego. Over the past 6 months, of 63 bank owned sales that were recorded in the San Diego MLS, 35% fell in the range between $200k – $300k. An additional 25% could be found between $300k and $400k, 17% between $400k and $500k and a then sharp drop above $500k ( to $600k) with 9%.

With a lot of short sales on the market in these ranges that are not selling (I’ll grab some of those numbers later), we can expect to see a healthy (buyers perspective) inventory of foreclosed homes to hang around for the next year, at least.

Foreclosure note: We are closing this week for a client on a unit in Little Italy at 58% of it’s last market sale (last sale was in 04 – Downtown peaked in 06). At $354 per square foot, it is $27 per square less than the average for other bank owned properties. There were 3 offers on this property, all within $15k of each other.

Bank owned properties are proving to be the best deals for attached units in 92101 (Downtown condos) per Sandicor (MLS) records. Using a price per square foot comparison for all units that have sold (per MLS records) over a 6 month history we find that bank owned units are closing, on average, for $61.53 less than properties being sold as short sales. Most of the sales we are seeing for bank owned (and short sale) properties are taking place in the $200k to $300k range followed closely by properties selling in the $300k to $400k range.