Square foot pricing from April 2006 compared to May 2008, and some purdy pictures

It has been a long time since I have posted, but I was inspired when someone posted some DataQuick zip code stats in the forums. I realized I have the April 2006 square foot pricing and sales data. So, I plugged the data into excel and here is what has happened since April of 2006. I do not know exactly when the peak was, but we all know some month in 2006 was the peak, and April is close. I have the June and July 2006 data to compare to as well. One thing… I do not know why DQ has never had the square foot pricing for 92602. My only reason I can think of is the difficulty getting the data from the new home sales. Oh, and the square foot pricing is for SFRs only, sorry no condos.

One thing I found interesting was SFRs are only down -7.9% in sales, but condos were down -42.2%. So while sales are not down that much for SFRs, the square foot price is really down and headed even further down.

Now, here are the NODs for Irvine via Foreclosure Radar

NODs

Here are the Notice of Trustee Sales…

IRNTSs

And, the REOs…

REOs

With 137 sales last month, and the amount of purdy red, green, and blue pins in Irvine, it looks to me like we have a must sell issue here. Go ahead and call me a nutter, I am used to it, but I have been right more than I have been wrong, and actually… I have been overly optimistic on the foreclosures. BTW, once I have the June foreclosure data, I will do a post on how bad it has become, with some great chartpr0n. Judging by how bad the numbers are so far for June, I may have to adjust my charts to accommodate for the increase in foreclosures; my chart didn’t go beyond the high of 96.

Also, OCR reporter and fellow blogger Matt Padilla has a book coming out Chain of Blame: How Wall Street Caused the Mortgage and Credit Crisis.

Padilla's Book

Matt was kind enough to send IHB an advance copy, and I am only a few chapters away from finishing it. I have to say it is a great read, and anyone who wants to know about the birth of subprime, the players involved from Lewis Ranieri to Bill Dallas to Brad Morrice to Ralph Cioffi to Stan O’Neal to Roland Arnall, how it went up and down, who screwed who, the death of New Century, who snorted the Kool-Aid, how Merrill got high off their own supply, great pot shots on the Tan Man and his tan, and how the Tan Man drops the f-bomb faster than he can sell his stock, then I suggest you order a copy now. This is a fantastic book, and I am not just saying that to promote Matt Padilla, as he knows I would dissect the book for what it is. I will do a full review once I finish the book, and once it is released. I don’t want to upset the publisher when they could be publishing the book that would complement this book, The Great Housing Bubble.

21 thoughts on “Square foot pricing from April 2006 compared to May 2008, and some purdy pictures

  1. stephen swintek

    Congrats on the book. I’m a long time fan, and frustrated housing bear. I would like to help you with your book cover. I created a cover for LA TIMES MAGAZINE several years ago illustrating how the high prices were leaving the average family behind. Unfortunately, the image was later repurchased and used by (!@#!*) David Learah for the cover of his books (personally devestating). I would be honored to clear my good name. Let me know.

  2. lawyerliz

    Could you put all those colorful pins on one page so we could marvel at the number of foreclosures.

    And then do some more chartporn, with those and all the REOs taken back in say, the last year.

    1. No_Such_Reality

      You need to stick the 68,000 non-foreclosure pins in the map to get an appreciation though.

      The foreclosure maps are illusionary. It looks super bad, but you need to zoom the map to a level were you can appreciate the NOD, NOT, or REO in context to the number of houses in the neighborhood.

      The little mushroom shaped clouds are nice, but on the map, they probably cover an area that covers 100+ homes. While REOs will be a problem, it isn’t quiet as ubitiqious as the maps look.

      1. Quincy k

        When an identical home right next door to you sells for 200k less than what you paid for yours, you are not giong to be worrying about what is ubiquitous and what is not.

        It is amazing how many people are still so utterly clueless on the severity of things believing that words like ubiquitous are going to make things better.

  3. Quincy k

    That is some nasty sh_t and it is only going to get worse. Much worse. Most people have absolutely no idea how bad this is going to get and are entirely clueless to what is currently happening. As this illustration has pointed out, only the May/June 07 defaults are now coming to fruition. When the Alt-A/Prime ARM’s start to adjust in 09-11, which have double the monetary value as the subprimes ARM’s, the real damage will start to occur.

    And when the normal and average American family wakes up to find out that they are 200k in the hole, their financial lives will be essentially over. Refinancing will not be an alternative if their ARM adjusts as the paper will be worthless and unsellable in a declining market. These will all become foreclosures unless they can come up with the negative equity(200k+). Within the next two years, many people are going to be taken out of the system. If you have cash and credit in 2010, and the banking system survives the impending crisis, there will be opportunities of a lifetime.

  4. Kirk

    Graphixs, All this proves is prices will go up as inexperienced sellers are replaced with the pros from the banks. Joe American doesn’t have a whole marketing department at their disposal, but the banks do. Good marketing can solve any problem.

    1. Craig

      Right…. because dumping hundreds of foreclosures on the market always boosts prices.

      “pros from the banks” — okay. The same pros who made all these bad loans in the first place? The pros at the banks are the ones most in denial of reality, sitting on foreclosed inventory while it loses even more value thanks to deferred maintenance, abandonment, and vandalism.

    2. lawyerliz

      Pros from the banks? Surely you jest.

      Pros and “banks” don’t belong in the same sentence.

    3. Kirk

      Yes, the pros at the banks. Your derision would be rightly directed at the underwriting departments of the banks, but I’m talking about the *marketing* departments. The smartest people in any company are in the marketing department.

      I headed up marketing at a small company a few years ago. Before I came on-board they had a difficult time turning a profit on their core product: prepackaged saline injectables for in-the-field treatment of dehydration.

      The first thing I did when I joined the company was rebrand the product as Insulin® brand saline injectables. There are subtle things that must be done in marketing that most people wouldn’t think make a difference. Brand name is obvious, but what isn’t is font size. I directed our team to use a 20pt font for the brand name and a 4pt font for the product description. While this may seem counter-intuitive, people are often turned off by long labeling.

      The result was that we tripled the price while simultaneously increasing sales tenfold. That is how marketing solves problems.

      1. tealeaf

        Kirk,

        You aren’t taking into account that distressed sellers need to get 2+ parties to agree to a short sale. that isn’t the case with the banks.

        so right off the bat, the crack marketing department has a lower target than the seller. second, have you ever met the folks who disposition RE for banks? they’re washed up realtors. In other cases, it’s farmed out to a local agent, who has to deal with the bank to negotiate a sale, which can take forever and further pressure on prices as we continue our spiral.

        I’m sure you’re great with branding, but if top dollar in RE doesn’t come by way of granite and cast iron banisters, it sure as hell isn’t coming with font size.

        Today, the marketing mix is about 3 things: price, price, price.

    4. LC

      Too bad banks are banks, and not purveyors of real estate. That is like asking a doctor to sell used cars. You can’t expect much when this happens. That is why banks inevitably dump real estate holdings.

      Marketing makes people buy stuff they don’t need. Never so true as applied to an overpriced Irvine crackerbox.

      1. Kirk

        The market decides what people need. The market says people need houses, gasoline and Insulin® brand saline injectables. People that think they know better than the market suffer from a God complex.

  5. Alan

    Great job Graphix, thanks…

    What’s got me sad is that I have to go to an internet blog to find such great stuff put up by a hard laboring individual such as yourself while the newspapers and TV don’t report these data and diagrams and put it on my doorstep in the morning, printing dumb stuff instead, then whine that their readership has gone down.

  6. profette

    Thanks for the lovely chartpr0n, graphcakes. The red, blue and green pins are a striking visual.

  7. zoiks

    IR, are you getting your inventory numbers from ziprealty.com? Their numbers seem to agree with your inventory figure.

    Except realtor.com shows 1134, after excluding multi-units and a few listings that aren’t actually in Irvine. Median list on realtor.com is 679k.

    Also, redfins figures are close to realtor.com, not ziprealty.

    1. zoiks

      I think I’ve answered my own question. Ziprealty (and indeed, Redfin) are not showing all the listings for a given area. I’ve found listings that are indeed active, and yet don’t show on ZR or RF, but can be found on realtor.com (and, interestingly, on craigslist).

      In fact, a neighbor of mine has been for sale, with a realtor (a well known one), for 6 weeks now, and the listing only shows up on realtor.com and craigslist, but not on zip or redfin. It seems to be some kind of “pocket listing” dealy.

      I can’t stand realtors. I hope they don’t have children so the vermin will disappear.

  8. graphrix

    One thing I noticed were most of the homes on foreclosure radar were not listed. I would say at best 10% were actually listed. So with just the REOs, there is a bunch of shadow inventory, and the way NODs and NTSs are converting to foreclosures, then there will be a bunch more inventory coming.

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