The S&P/Case-Shiller Index showed Tuesday that from April 2013 to April 2014, home prices in San Diego County rose 15.3 percent, the lowest in a year. Also, from March to April, prices in the county rose 0.8 percent on the 20-city index, one of the slowest rates in the nation.
“The market has stabilized. There’s not that big of an opportunity to enjoy speculative value increases,” said Mark Goldman, a loan officer and real-estate lecturer at San Diego State University. “Stability, equilibrium, predictability and reduced risk are all beneficial to the housing market.”
Goldman said he sees the county on the way back to its historic appreciation levels of 3 percent to 3.5 percent. Annual appreciation peaked at 21.5 percent in August 2013. The index, which lags two months, measures repeat sales of single-family homes.
Overall, San Diego joined San Francisco and Los Angeles as the only markets to see as much as a 3 percentage-point slowdown in annual appreciation in April when compared to March. In fact, 19 of the 20 cities on the index saw their annual gains falter. Still, San Diego’s 15.3 percent appreciation is above the 20-city average of 10.8 percent.
David Blitzer, chairman of the index committee at S&P Dow Jones Indices, said he still expects prices to rise in the near term, thanks to low mortgage rates and an improving job market.
“Housing is not back to normal: prices are being supported by cash sales, low inventories and declining foreclosure and (bank-owned) sales,” he said. “First-time homebuyers are not back in force, and qualifying for a mortgage remains challenging. The question is whether housing will bounce back before the (Federal Reserve) begins to tighten (stimulus) sometime next year.”
DataQuick, another real-estate tracker, reported in April that San Diego County’s median home sale price was $435,000. It rose to $440,000 in May.
San Diego’s value on the Case-Shiller index was 200.8, the highest since 202.5 in December 2007, the first month of the Great Recession. The nation’s total was 168.7 on the 20-city index.
Las Vegas had the highest year-over-year gain in April, with prices up 18.8 percent on the index. San Francisco came in second with an 18.2 percent clip. Both cities saw their annual appreciation fall from more than 20 percent on the index in March.
