Daily Breeze: South Bay home prices continue downward slide

Muhammed El-Hasan at the Daily Breeze reported on South Bay home prices today, saving me work (thanks Muhammed!).

The story sub-headline notes:

Median decline is smaller than in rest of county but is part of trend.

I detect just hint of desperation here, not by the author of this story so much as for whom he is writing. Everybody wants to think this spiral downward is affecting everybody else's homes, in other parts of Los Angeles County, California, and the nation, but not theirs.

Realtor Adolph James was interviewed for this story and he is being honest. He notes that in the client area he serves, around Mira Costa High School, the typical number of listings he would have for January is maybe 10 or 12. This time it was about 40.

He's still looking for a bottom, only this time it's been pushed out to mid-2010. One of my bottom-hunter rules is that the industry has to stop looking for a bottom before I'll start looking for a bottom.

James says "we've had years where [real estate] has moved 13, 14, 15% [in one year]. We're giving it back now." If blog readers have seen my recent Redondo Beach charts, you'll notice we've had recent years where the median price has shot up in excess of 30%, not just 15%.

Sales have been so bad that many areas in the South Bay have been left off the statistics, because they didn't generate the minimum number of sales.

Click on the image to read the whole story.