As most of the readers here know, my team has been working with new technology to extract, refine and exploit information that is all around us. We have named that technology Boomerang and one example of it is an application called Hardtack.

We are approaching the 1 year anniversary of full scale data gathering with Hardtack, and it is interesting to note what the data is describing to us. Today we are looking at information taken from the Real Estate MLS systems describing the asking price, per square foot. Last time we looked at price trends of cities in California, now we are going to look at a more detailed view of towns in San Diego county and how they sort out for price declines or increases per square foot.

All real estate sales are governed by the local real estate board, who own and control a specialized database system called the MLS, or multiple listing service. By monitoring the data flowing through these MLS systems, we are able to see what sellers are hoping to get for their property, and measure several parameters about the property for sale.

Below is a chart showing the major cities of the San Diego MSA, and how the price per square foot has changed over the past year (click on the chart for a larger view).

Full details with lots of charts after the jump

The graphs below represents the percentage change in the asking price per square foot for a median single family home in each of the listed town in San Diego, you can click on any graph for a larger view:

North County San Diego - Inland

As we can see North County Inland is all declining with exception of Julian, up in the mountains to the east. I am a bit suspicious of the data for Palomar, as the data set is small and probably prone to huge swings. Please remember the changes displayed here are in the prices people are asking for their homes when the put them up for sale.

North County San Diego - Costal

As Jim Klinge points out, the coast is holding up fairly well. As an example we can see that Cardiff and Rancho Santa Fe are actually going up in list price per square foot, and some areas like Oceanside are going down in a big way.

San Diego Central

For the main portion of San Diego, we see the -12% or so that Rich Toscano has been sighting on his web site, and we see that list prices in Coronado and La Jolla are stil going up (no surprise there).

San Diego East County

East county is clearly taking a beating, and like Palomar, the Dulzura numbers come from a fairly small data set, and should be taken with a large dose of skepticism. Jamul is holding its own with -3% drop in asking price when the house is listed for sale.

San Diego - South Bay / Border Towns

The south bay / border towns are suffering a significant decline. In this area there was a great deal of creative financing used in brand new developments that were built in a hurry. As it stands now this area is booming with defaults and REO sales, depressing the listing prices in the MLS.

Clearly, real estate markets are highly localized. Some areas in San Diego are still appreciating, and most are declining some or by a large amount. These numbers are fairly close to raw, taken from MLS listings sampled weekly over the past year. Use them with caution.