The Case-Shiller index is the most accurate measure of aggregate home price changes, for reasons long-since described here . But it's been an ongoing gripe of mine (and everyone's) that the index lags so badly. The data that was just released a couple days ago on October 27, for instance, only t ... Read more

Nobody should be very surprised that the Case-Shiller index rose again in August. This time around, the long-suffering low tier turned in the best performance with a robust 2.5 percent increase. The middle tier rose 1.6 percent for the month and the high tier increased .3 percent, with the aggr ... Read more

Here, a little later than usual, is the monthly foreclosure activity update. The following chart shows that default notices and trustee sales, respectively the initial and final stages of foreclosure, both declined last month. But both defaults and trustee sales remain at levels that are ... Read more

Let's take a slightly different look at the construction, finance/real estate, and retail job sectors. I have long highlighted these three industries in my analysis because they were directly involved in the housing bubble, benefitting from the respective frenzies for building homes, lending funds ... Read more

The rate of year-over-year job losses in San Diego declined again last month, according to the latest estimates from the EDD. Between September 2008 and September 2009, the region lost 52,000 jobs. This is not great, obviously, but it's an improvement over recent months. continue reading ... Read more

Some have asked what distinguishes a Data Rodeo from a Chartfest or for that matter the rarely seen Chart Extravaganza. The answer, which I will fabricate as I type this sentence, is that Data Rodeos are reserved for the monthly roundup of resale data, whereas the two alternate names are used for ... Read more

For a long time I have been discussing, with various degrees of rantiness, government intervention in the housing market. When I first touched on the subject in early 2007, before any bailouts had begun, some of the potential interventions I envisioned seemed kind of far-fetched. By late 2007, a ... Read more

The July update of the Case-Shiller San Diego home price index is in. The index increased by 2.5 percent from June -- a substantial ( if expected ) one-month bounce. As usual, Kelly has done a nice writeup on month-to-month changes with and without seasonal adjustments. I'll supplement her ... Read more

In response to last week's article on historical home sales , a reader requested charts expressing the sales data in terms of dollars' worth of homes sold instead of just the number of homes sold. I had to cobble a few things together to make these charts. (Non-nerds may skip the rest of this ... Read more

According to the Employment Development Department's latest estimates, San Diego's year-over-year rate of job losses slowed for the first time in 2009. The region's employment decreased by 55,600 jobs between August 2008 and August 2009, a decline of 4.3 percent. That is good news -- if the ... Read more