We really need to wait a bit for data to be available to assess real estate marke t recovery in 2009. I plan to post results for local markets later in January and national data will take longer. But in the meantime, the New York Times has published an excellent interactive site that allows a snapshot of the performance for each of the 20 major markets covered by the S&P Case-Shiller Index (for more about the index, see my earlier post by clicking here and check the right side bar for a link to the index itself). This LINK will take you to the interactive chart so you can view each of the markets and see how it compares with the national composite. Below is the snapshot for the San Francisco market which, don’t forget, is really a broad composite of San Francisco, San Mateo, Contra Costa, Alameda and Marin counties.
Keep in mind that it is the year-over-year price performance that is being tracked on a monthly basis (i.e, june over june, then july over july) and that the latest data available right now is October. The good news is that the year over year trend is definitely improving. However, like politics, all real estate is local, and the tale is very different depending on the specific locale. Stay tuned in late January for data from the local markets.
Notice that on this scale, the SF market area is a lot better off than Las Vegas which is still showing an year-over-year decline of 27%. But look, we’re in the company of places like Denver which, a couple of years ago, before foreclosures became so fashionable, was the foreclosure capital of the US (or, at least one of them). Denver’s year-over-year decline of about 0% is partly testimony to the air having been let out of that market early on and the fact that the enormous gains that were observed a few years ago just didn’t happen; it had a much flatter curve. But in our case, the numbers reflect that the price decreases, while steep, seem to have stabilized. And that is corroborated by observations that buyers appear to be ready to buy; they are really just waiting for the right home to appear.
New York Times Analysis of Case-Shiller Residential Real Estate Index for San Francisco Market
