Looking to buy a home in 2023? In this video, San Diego Realtor Jeremy Mchone will give you a comprehensive update on the current state of the real estate market and provide insights on what you can expect as a home buyer. He will cover everything from the latest trends and forecasts to tips on navigating the market as a buyer and discussing factors such as interest rates, housing inventory, and home prices to give you a clear picture of what to expect in the coming months.

Whether you're a first-time home buyer or an experienced investor, this video will provide you with valuable information to help you make informed decisions in the real estate market. Don't miss out on this important update

I'm Jeremy McHone with Whissel Realty Group. This is your market update for San Diego County for the month of March. I know you're looking at this in April, but numbers come out a little bit late so that's why this is for the data of the month of March. So what's happening in San Diego County?

The last few months I've been talking about how home prices have been coming down, declining, and that's kind of been what every market update has been for the last few months. This one's actually going to be a little bit different. We have started to see prices come up in San Diego County. So let's break that down a little bit. Prices peaked in May of last year at a median home price for the county of around 850. From that point, prices declined all the way through pretty much the end of the year, but they stayed flat when they declined down to about 750 in the month of November, and median prices in the county stayed around 750 in November, December, and January. In February, we saw it tick up a little bit to 756.

But here's the thing. Now that March is about done, I'm filming this on the last day of March, the median home price for March jumped from 756 in February all the way up to 800,000 in March. Now, why did that happen? It's a combination of things. One, buyers are getting used to the interest rates and have accepted the fact that rates are just in the sixes and that's what it is. People still want to buy houses. The other thing and this is probably the biggest thing that's caused prices to start to come up in addition to the demand, is that inventory is really low right now.

There are not a lot of people selling their homes. I suspect that's because there are a lot of people that have mortgage rates in the twos and threes, and they don't want to sell and buy something in the sixes. But either way, inventory is low. So we have low inventory, and we have buyer demand that's getting stronger and stronger each day. To put a number on it, we have 1.2 months’ worth of supply here in San Diego County right now. Now, what does that mean? If you watched my other videos, I've broken down what that metric means but essentially what that means is that if no other homes came on the market right now, at the rate homes are coming off the market, it would take 1.2 months for all the inventory to get sold in the county. Now, that's not a lot of supply. We want to see three, four, five, six months’ worth of supply for a more balanced market. And keep in mind, that this takes into account buyer activity.

So that means that with the way things are going, we're seeing more buyers buying homes than there are homes to sell, which makes sense because we're seeing prices start to come up. If you've been trying to time the market, unfortunately, I think I've got bad news for you. The bottom probably past us. All the information points, all the data points to the bottom being behind us 'cause prices were going down. They were flat, and now we just saw a big jump back up. Now, could they go back down? It's possible, but I find that unlikely. One, we still have very low inventory. We're seeing multiple offers on a lot of houses, so we're still seeing strong buyer demand. And also, with the way things are going, usually this is the time of year where we start to see buyer activity pick up even more. So it's already a hot market. We've seen prices start to come up. We've seen it get more competitive in March. We usually don't see that until April, or May, or June. So if April, or May, or June, we see a lot more buyers jump into the market like we typically do and inventory stays fairly low, the market's going to heat back up and get not probably how it was in 2022 or 2021 but it's going to get a lot more competitive. So all of the signs are pointing, all the data is pointing to the bottom of the market being behind us.

Don't get thrown off by stats you see out there that talk about how prices are down or inventory climb. A lot of those stats you see are year-over-year stats. And so, yes, if you look at this last month, year-over-year median prices in San Diego County are down, but that's a misleading stat, right, because that would make you think, "Oh, prices are dropping because prices are down. Median prices are down 2.5%." Well, but compared to the last month, prices came up quite a bit. So you really want to make sure you're paying attention to the context of the data that you're looking at. I can tell you I just pulled the data. Median prices just jumped from 756 in February to 800,000 for the county of San Diego in March. That's a big jump. And so what that tells me is that prices are coming back up.

It's getting more competitive, and I can just tell you anecdotally, I'm seeing multiple offers on most homes especially if they're priced correctly, and we're just not seeing a lot of inventory. 1.2 months of inventory is not very much. So if you want more information on this data or you want to discuss whether right now is a good time to buy or sell or what this data means to you, drop a comment below, or just shoot me a DM, or call me at 619-971-0791. Thank you.