San Diego Market Watch - Real Estate Update For September 19, 2024

The number of homes for sale in San Diego County continues its slow steady climb as new listings plateau and pending sales increase. Interest rates are big news this week. We are going to get into all of that here in just a minute so hang out till the end and find out what's going on. Today is September 19, 2024 and you are watching San Diego Market Watch. Thank you for tuning in. If you're new to this channel, please hit that like button. Subscribe so you don't miss any of these weekly updates and let us know where you're watching from and what questions you might have about buying or selling real estate here in San Diego County. We can help. We've been realtors here in San Diego County for over 20 years and know San Diego County inside and out so we can help you. Let's get right into it. Looking at the number of homes for sale, we are getting closer and closer to this 5,000 mark. I haven't gotten there yet. Will we exceed 5,000? Will it keep going? Hard to say, although the last four weeks new listings have definitely plateaued while pending sales are starting to climb back out of the gutter where they hit their lowest point this year on September 4th. So with the improving interest rates, it is quite possible that pending sales are going to start taking off again. It's been a little sluggish to respond to rate increases, but now that the Fed has signaled they have confidence in the economy, we'll see what happens next. When we look at interest rates, in fact, they have just been going down, down, down the last couple of months. And here we are at 6.09%, one of the lowest weekly averages I can remember for at least the last six months, if not 12 months, I'd have to go back and look for sure. However, if rates dip into the fives, I really believe you're going to see this market catch fire in terms of pending sales and possibly new listings too, because there are a lot of sellers that feel trapped in their home and they want to move, but they do not want to exchange their ultra low rate mortgage for something in the mid to high sixes or sevens. However, when you start getting into the fives, that becomes a bit of an easier pill to swallow for people. So we will see exactly how that affects new listings, whether those new listings are entry-level homes, whether they're high-end homes, a mixture of the two, we will see, nobody can really tell you for sure. However, it is going to spur real estate activity. No doubt about that. Now, when you look at what's been going on the past two months, median price has been dropping and rather sharply over a two month period here. Although when you look at median price over the last few years, we do have these large oscillations up and down and then up and down again, but the trend is generally, not generally, the trend is up. Last two months, things have not looked good and probably will continue to show a bit of a decline when we look at this month's numbers, when they come out in early October. We will see though, I see this as sort of similar to what was happening in 2022 when we had inventory increasing, listings sitting longer, median price declining, and then all of a sudden new listings stalled out and lower rates came in at that time and spurred buyers to start eating up that inventory. Will it be the same thing again or will it be different or will it be a little of both? Probably a little of both, but we will see. So that's what's going on in San Diego real estate this week. As always, remember to like, share, subscribe, and comment. We will be back next week with more neighborhood real estate updates and more San Diego market watch, more of everything. So stay tuned for that. Have a great weekend and we will talk to you soon.