San Diego Real Estate Update - La Mesa - September 2024

High inventory and sagging sales persist in La Mesa. What am I talking about? Hang out with me for the next few minutes and I will explain. Today is September 9th, 2024, and this is a La Mesa real estate market update. If you're new to this channel, please hit that like button. Give us a comment, give us a subscribe, let us know where you're watching from and what you'd like to see us do next. We're talking about La Mesa right now, so let's jump right into it. Okay, looking at this map, I see 141 active properties, 64 pending and 58 sold in the last 30 days. And why do I say sales are sagging and inventory is stacking and so forth? Well, last time we looked at La Mesa, there were about 160 active and 80 some, 81, 82 pending, and then you look at what's closed in the last 30 days since that last update, and those 82 pending turned into roughly, well, not roughly, exactly 58 sold. So there were 20 some properties that didn't close and either went back into this active pile or are back in this pending pile now. So activity is, I would say, somewhat lackluster in terms of sales versus active listings. So when you look at 64 to 141, that means there are a whole bunch of sellers in La Mesa right now that need some sort of intervention in order to get the property sold in the next 30 days, whether that is more buyer activity or whether that is a price reduction in order to get yourself in line with what the market is actually doing, because with this imbalance between pending and active properties, that means there are a whole bunch of properties currently listed that are not heading into escrow in the next 30 days, again, without some sort of intervention. And this is also interesting given recent interest rate declines that really doesn't seem to have translated into a lot of new buyer activity in La Mesa, at least not yet. We will keep our eye on it. Now let's go ahead and take a look at the longer-term trend here, going back to January of 2021, La Mesa, whoops, wrong statistic there. Let's look at median price. La Mesa has remained, has started back in January of 2021, and before that, of course, lower than the median price in San Diego County, which makes it a really good candidate for entry-level neighborhood here in San Diego County. In January of 21, it was at 671, and then in April of 2022, it was at 891. But look at what's happened since then. A lot of other zip codes have struggled to get back to their high point that they saw in the spring of 2022, but La Mesa has done a very nice, steady climb to April of this year, where it peaked at 930, and then currently now sits at 900. So this, I do believe, is representative of the fact that this is a pretty good entry point into the San Diego market for those looking for a home that's lower than median price. There are certainly less expensive neighborhoods than La Mesa, but when you look at the mix of everything that first-time buyers are looking for, La Mesa has a lot of that, and it's below median price in the county, which makes it a great candidate, which appears to have caused the price there to remain on the upswing where other zip codes have done a lot more up and down. So that's an interesting point, I guess. When we look at percent of original list price to final closed sale price, like everywhere else, the peak in La Mesa was in the spring of 2022, 110.6%, and then even with the rising prices in La Mesa, the percent over asking price has never again reached that high point of 110.6, 106.3 last September, and pretty much down from there, and then currently sitting at 100.4. So on average right now, sellers in La Mesa are getting exactly what they're asking for, except there are that huge segment of sellers that aren't going under contract because there aren't enough buyers in the market to soak up that available inventory, and when we look at average market time right now, La Mesa's at 19 days, San Diego County at 23 days, so La Mesa just under the average market time for the whole county there. So if you're a seller in La Mesa right now, definitely important to pay attention to all of this information and get your price right so you're one of the ones who sells and not one of the ones that doesn't sell. That's the best way to sell is to price it well. I've always said that and will always say that. So that is what's going on in La Mesa right now. If you like this content, please remember to like, share, subscribe, and comment. We will be back later this week with more updates for you, so stay tuned for that. Until then, have a great week, and I will talk to you soon.