Remember last May when we first suggested you take a look at the Spring PMI Risk Index? And then how two months later Kiplinger’s finally gets around to publishing a story about the report and gets all the press? Well, here’s another two-month head start for the SocketSite community…
According to the PMI Group’s Summer Market Risk Index, the chance of a price decline in San Francisco increased 6.4% last quarter (the third largest increase amongst all the major MSAs), and now stands at an overall 45.9% likelihood of decline. That’s not good.
Marco Van Akkeren, an economist with PMI Mortgage Insurance Co., explained, “We are continuing to witness record-pace home price appreciation in many markets without the necessary gains in income, home affordability and rent inflation. This is causing the current home price environment to diverge from long-term economic fundamentals, which cannot be sustained indefinitely.”
Across the bay Oakland hit 50.9% to become only one of six US markets with a greater than 50% chance of decline.
· Economic and Real Estate Trends: Summer 2005 – pdf [PMI Group]