San Diego County home prices were nearly flat from October to November, but are still up 18.7 percent over the year, the S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Index showed Tuesday.
From October to November, home prices rose 0.04 percent on the index, continuing a steady monthly slowdown from the roughly 5 percent gains seen in the peak spring and summer buying season. From September to October, prices rose 0.3 percent, and from August to September, they were up 0.9 percent. The last time home values fell was in January 2013, when they dropped 1.03 percent from December 2012.
“The market’s leveling off,” said Mark Goldman, a loan officer and real estate lecturer at San Diego State University. “Prices had gone too high, then in 2008 they went too low so they recovered from that. Now we’re back to where they ought to be. We’re on the trend line.”
Goldman said he expects annual price increases to level off over the next 12 months to around 3.5 percent.
The Case-Shiller index works by comparing repeat-sales of single-family homes. In November, the index reached 194.15 for San Diego County, up 18.7 percent from the same time last year. The annual gain ranks San Diego fourth on the 20-city index, which has an average year-over-year gain of 13.7 percent, up from 13.6 percent in October.
David Blitzer, chairman of the Index Committee at S&P Dow Jones Indices, said in a statement that prices typically weaken in the winter months, and despite a monthly 0.1 percent decline, the November performance was its best since 2005.
Seasonality aside, the housing market has seen some headwinds, most notably lower affordability with higher median prices and interest rates that are creeping up. In November, the average 30-year-fixed was 4.26 percent, up from a low of 3.41 in January 2013, Freddie Mac reports. The November median price, according to DataQuick, was $415,000 in San Diego County. It rose to $420,000 in December, a 14.8 percent year-over-year gain.
Still, Blitzer said the market will continue slowing.
“While housing will make further contributions to the economy in 2014, the pace of price gains is likely to slow during the year,” he said.
Las Vegas had the highest year-over-year gain on the index, at 27.3 percent. San Francisco was second with 23.2 percent, while Los Angeles was third with 21.6 percent.
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