If I were more dedicated, I could create a nice website like Ipo, but…instead I’ll post summaries here.

I do follow the Costa Mesa market closely, focusing on SFR<$900k and a smattering of nice condos.

Here is the data YTD:

Case-Schiller for Costa Mesa (Jan 2000 = CS=100)

SFR <$900k, a few nice condos

Month…....Sales….......CS=.........SEM….................................equivalent date
JFM:............15…........182….........8…......(limited dataset)...........Feb 2004
April:...........10…........188….........7…......(limited dataset)...........Mar 2004
May:............27…........184…........5…..........................................Mar 2004
June:...........26…........181…........5…..........................................Feb 2004
July:............37…........184 ..........5…..........................................Mar 2004
Aug:............47…........191…........5…..........................................Apr 2004
Sept:...........37…........177…........4…..........................................Jan 2004
Oct:.............22…........186…........6…........(to 10/15)..................Mar 2004

So far, much like the IpoCS, the CSCM is mostly flat this year. 

I had been hoping for more movement, myself. 

I still hold out hope for the rest of the years, since October closes reflect august-ish escrows.  Interestingly, one went into escrow as early as March, with a smattering in the subsequent months to September escrows.

Here’s to hoping that sales and prices drop for things going into escrow later in the year!

I was looking for a while .. got depressed looking at everything being overpriced.

There are some homes in terrible condition and sellers still asking insane amounts.  Have you been inside the home on Olympic?  It’s mad jacked up.  You’re basically buying land.  I think the entire foundation is worthless.  But I’m not a professional, so eh .. maybe it’s still worth it for a broken lot w/the freeway on the other side of the wall.

I’ve not been in that Olympic house (the one priced at $320, “contractors special”, no?)  I personally won’t live within 1/3 of a mile to the 405 fwy.  too much exhaust and noise have been shown to be very detrimental to one’s health. 

I agree that it is depressing how the prices have arrested.  I don’t think that they can hold much longer, though.

Yes, contractor’s special.  The foundation looks like a 8.0 horizontally ripped through the lot.  Then you see the kitchen floor has a hole in it .. which I’m guessing is someone sprung a nice water leak which they fixed by going through the kitchen, but too late ..

Bottom line is - it’s bad.  You’d have to sink so much cash into it .. good luck getting loans for that sucker.

I went to zillow to see what our house was valued at in 2000 and then multiplied that by 1.86 and came up with $372K, which in nominal terms would be early 2003. If I adjust that $372K for 5 years of inflation, it comes out to $441K, which is the nominal equivalent of 2004. So if we are looking at where we are in real terms, are we back to early 2003? Or do you already account for inflation with your CS formula?

CS does not adjust for inflation, though you could predict that the value would rise due to it.

Of course, then we get back to the question of for housing, what measure of inflation should we be using?  CPI?  some measure of CPI less energy?  wage inflation?

anyway, its absolute.  CS=100 is jan 2000 prices.

Any guesses what the measure will be in Jan 2009?

3.5% seems to have gotten pretty widespread acceptance, so if 2000 is the benchmark and we adjust for inflation at this rate, Jan ‘09 would expect a CS of 136. That would be an awfully large drop in 60 days. I’m still confused by the index though because I’m seeing closes well below $400K in the last 45 days, which you didn’t really see until now. I’m wondering if the index for sub $500K houses is much lower than 186? The east side and canyon area hasn’t dropped anyway near as much as the rest of the city.

the different price bands in the SoCal landscape seem to have much different dynamics lately, with the lowest-priced stuff falling hard on heavy volume as the “upper middle class” housing stock (550-750K) enjoys a slight rally on very low volume.  as many have posted, this could correspond with the differing schedules of adjustable mortgage stress and/or higher levels of equity in the more desirable and established ‘hoods.

well, CS is backwards looking, it relies on closed sales compared to the previous sale of *that same house*.

i think the recent drop of the low-end in CM (and I presume other cities) in listing price/offered price has not yet been reflected in closed sales.  sales that go into escrow in Oct won’t show up until December.

A good forward looking measure is housingtracker.com’s compilation of listing prices.  For OC as a whole, the listing prices of the median is off 30% from peak (which was 270, hence OC’s overall CS=180), while for the lower quartile they are off 40%, and the upper quartile only 15%.

Thanks again for posting this Freedom. Based on what I’m seeing, these Freeman homes are now sellling for 45-50% off their peaks. The east side is still so unaffordable. 155 20th ended up selling for $519K, which was a short sale back in March that I was very interested in. At the time, the agent said that they had offers as high as $600K, so we gave up. It wasn’t the most attractive house, but it had a huge double lot completely zoned for a second unit. Being on the corner and the extra lot in the back, you could have easily split it off without it seeming like a split. The third bd had it’s own bath and private entry, so we talked about putting in a little kithenette and renting it out to make it affordable. Even then it would have been a stretch.

I’m kind of bummed that renting out your current residence isn’t an option any longer if you want a mortgage on another house. I had been figuring that if prices eventually came down on the east side, that we could buy there and rent this one out. :( However, if they only drop 20% overall over there, then it’s still out of our league.

HousingTracker numbers for listing prices in The OC are in for October.

25th percentile $313,700, 2.9% drop since Sept, 41.5% off peak

50th…..............$467,850, 2.7%......................., 32.7%

75th…..............$791.000, 0.7%......................., 18.7%

There’s been a bit of talk about Eastside prices.  They may still seem high compared to what we see in other areas of the City.  This is reflected in the inventory in different areas of Costa Mesa.  On the Eastside, if you look at sales over the last 3 months compared to homes currently for sale, it would take over 8 months for all of the homes to sell if no new ones came up for sale. 

On the other hand, looking at the same analysis, Mesa Verde has just under 3 months of supply.

It may be that Eastside still has a way to come; time will tell.

(I invited Christine Donovan, above, to join in on the discussion.  She is a real estate salesperson/broker in CM.  I hope that she can add a bit of perspective here)

She has a website which I visit:  http://activerain.com/blogs/cldonovan

I don’t know if she has another one?

Ok, October sales have all come in.  The final tally for the CMCS

Case-Schiller for Costa Mesa
SFR <$900k, a few nice condos

Month…....Sales….......CS=.........SEM….................................equivalent date
JFM:............15…........182….........8…......(limited dataset)...........Feb 2004
April:...........10…........188….........7…......(limited dataset)...........Mar 2004
May:............27…........184…........5…..........................................Mar 2004
June:...........26…........181…........5…..........................................Feb 2004
July:............37…........184 ..........5…..........................................Mar 2004
Aug:............47…........191…........5…..........................................Apr 2004
Sept:...........37…........177…........4…..........................................Jan 2004
Oct:.............39…........180…........4…...........................................Feb 2004

So sales volume stayed up and prices dropped nominally, but most of these sales went into escrow July to late August, so the credit crunch hadn’t yet hit.  And as the month progressed, the CS values dropped, with the average for the final 10 days of August dropping into the 150s.

We’ll see what November brings…

Thanks for the update Freedom. 150’s sounds much closer to what I’m seeing over in this part of town, but the eastside still seems to be well over 180.

Surprisingly, it is the nicest parts of Mesa Verde that are holding up best, followed by the Eastside, college park, north CM, and then SW CM.  (but limited data, of course)

In your area, 657 Cove went at CS=160, and 1929 Arnold at CS=140

The place on Arnold is a real dump. The garage is poorly converted. Nice sized lot, but it backs up to the alley there, which is highly undesirable in this part of town. I can’t believe it sold for $415K. To me, the CS seems higher than 140 for that one.  Cove is a really nice street and that house has been really nicely updated, albeit it’s still on the smaller side with the original sq footage, but it does have a detached two car garage in the back. For $411K, it was certainly better than the Arnold property. How do you obtain the 2000 value to calculate the CS?

speaking of college park, remember that place on the corner of princeton and harbor that an agent/flipper bought and had that ridiculous description? It was 463. I’ve seen an in escrow sign on it for the last few weeks. It will be interesting to see what she got for it, but I’d be surprised if she really made any money on it.

for Cove, sold for $411, previous sale was $507 in 5/2004 (cs=199), so 507/411*199=160

for Arnold, sold for $415, ...$795 in 3/2006 (CS=268), =140

Cove also had a sale in 6/1991(CS=94) for $188, which would give CS=205, but using 17 year old data introduces a lot more variables than the more current sale.  e.g. neighborhood changing, maintainence, etc

and yes, i’ll be curious to see princeton.  so far, it hasn’t cleared escrow and shown up on the mls.

How do you know what the CS was at the time of the last sale?

the realtor neighbor on the corner with the big monstrosity house said his agency handled the short sale on Cove. He told me that the guy who had it somehow had bought a property over in Mesa Verde and walked on this one.

stepping_up - 18 November 2008 05:18 PM

How do you know what the CS was at the time of the last sale?

just look it up on the spreadsheet!

(can be downloaded from s&p, or pm me and i can email it)

Case-Schiller for Costa Mesa
SFR <$900k, a few nice condos

Month…....Sales…....Price…....SE….......CS=.........SEM….................................equivalent date
JFM:............15…......479…......22…....182….........8…......(limited dataset).............Feb 2004
April:...........10…......491…......14…....188….........7…......(limited dataset).............Mar 2004
May:............27…......532…......15…....184….........5…...........................................Mar 2004
June:...........26…......548…......21…....181….........5…...........................................Feb 2004
July:............37…......516…......17…....184 ...........5…...........................................Mar 2004
Aug:............47…......548…......15…....191….........5…...........................................Apr 2004
Sept:...........37…......548…......23…....177….........4…...........................................Jan 2004
Oct:.............39…......538…......20…....180….........4…...........................................Feb 2004
Nov…...........29…......518…......25…....180….........6…...........................................Feb 2004

Sales volume dropped a bit and prices dropped nominally in November.  I added the mean and se for the selling price to the stats this month.  This is of course biased by the houses that I personally track (excluding lower end condos and higher end SFRs), but it does track every sale of SFRs below $900k in the market.  (I do actually track some above $900k for kicks and giggles, but none of them have sold in the past year, maybe not surprisingly)

Most of these sales went into escrow October And as the month progressed, the CS values dropped, but not the big drops with the tightening credit that we were looking for.

We’ll see what December brings…

what is up with that? I keep seeing stuff lower and lower every month consecutively, yet this shows that things haven’t changed all that much… is just the lower end getting lower and everthing else not, so it looks like it’s not moving down much?

freedomCM - 15 December 2008 10:23 PM

Case-Schiller for Costa Mesa
SFR <$900k, a few nice condos

Month…....Sales…....Price…....SE….......CS=.........SEM….................................equivalent date
JFM:............15…......479…......22…....182….........8…......(limited dataset).............Feb 2004
April:...........10…......491…......14…....188….........7…......(limited dataset).............Mar 2004
May:............27…......532…......15…....184….........5…...........................................Mar 2004
June:...........26…......548…......21…....181….........5…...........................................Feb 2004
July:............37…......516…......17…....184 ...........5…...........................................Mar 2004
Aug:............47…......548…......15…....191….........5…...........................................Apr 2004
Sept:...........37…......548…......23…....177….........4…...........................................Jan 2004
Oct:.............39…......538…......20…....180….........4…...........................................Feb 2004
Nov…...........29…......518…......25…....180….........6…...........................................Feb 2004

Sales volume dropped a bit and prices dropped nominally in November.  I added the mean and se for the selling price to the stats this month.  This is of course biased by the houses that I personally track (excluding lower end condos and higher end SFRs), but it does track every sale of SFRs below $900k in the market.  (I do actually track some above $900k for kicks and giggles, but none of them have sold in the past year, maybe not surprisingly)

Most of these sales went into escrow October And as the month progressed, the CS values dropped, but not the big drops with the tightening credit that we were looking for.

We’ll see what December brings…

Good stuff freedom.  So CM has rolled back a bit deeper than Irvine but has been essentially flat all year as well.  I thought when I opened up to lower end properties that I’d start to see them drag down the CS index but it hasn’t happened yet.  I do see the signs of stress on the Irvine low end but the volumes have been low enough that people paying 2005 prices on higher-end homes has countered those deeper cuts.

I have noticed closings picking up quite a bit of late.  Seems like no one was closing anything in early December but now, they have started popping through with regularity again.

stepping_up - 15 December 2008 10:41 PM

what is up with that? I keep seeing stuff lower and lower every month consecutively, yet this shows that things haven’t changed all that much… is just the lower end getting lower and everthing else not, so it looks like it’s not moving down much?

Its hard to know, really.  I was looking at the data last night and couldn’t figure it out. 

One thing is that there were several sales of nicely renovated mesa verde properties, and a few on the east and west sides, that drove the values up (CS=247, 222,222, 216).  One was the CM Flip-that-house.  These sales counterbalanced the few that sold for 2001 prices on the west-side and south coast areas.(CS=119,122,125)

Of course, with only 29 sales last month, it is too small a sample to be able to break it out by neighborhood in any reliable way, just annectodately.