San Diego Real Estate 1 of 10 Cities Improving by Forbes

In an article yesterday on Forbes.com, San Diego was included in one of the ten cities where real estate prices are improving.

The numbers may not sound great, but they’re a great relief from the plummeting prices of 2007.

“Broadly speaking, the rate of annual decline in home price values continues to improve,” David M. Blitzer, chairman of the Index Committee at Standard & Poor’s told the press on Tuesday. “While many of the markets remain down versus this time last year, the relative rate of decline has shown some real improvement. California, in particular, has seen some real positive prints in recent months.”

The ten cities included Minneapolis, Minn., San Francisco, CA, Detroit, Mich., Chicago, Ill, Phoenix, AZ, San Diego, CA, Los Angeles, CA, Washington, DC, Denver, CO, and Seattle, WA.

6. San Diego, Calif.

San Diego home prices also increased 1.6%, but reported a 2.5% increase in July, and fell about 8.9% since last year. In areas like San Diego, banks have been slowly working through their inventory of foreclosed homes, which often sell at bargain prices and bring down price averages.

I would suggest some caution when looking at market data from Case-Shiller which lags behind, this report being from July to August 2009.  Read my recent article The Case of the Lagging Case Shiller Home Index – Caution Ahead. Never the less this is some positive new for our San Diego market and worth keeping an eye on numbers for the upcoming months and into early 2010.