› News Release

Title

Residential Real Estate Community Gathers for 2008 Outlook

Message

More than 300 people attended the Eighth Annual Residential Real Estate Conference: Outlook 2008, hosted by the Burnham-Moores Center for Real Estate on Dec. 12.

Lenders, developers, builders and Realtors came together at the half-day conference to hear the perspectives of economists, industry professionals and USD MBA students on where the market is headed in 2008 and beyond.

USD associate professor Alan Gin said that while he did not believe San Diego would experience a downturn — the classic definition of a recession — he did think the county would experience a recession "San Diego style."

"A recession San Diego style would entail slower job growth," said Gin, who publishes the monthly San Diego Index of Leading Economic Indicators for the Burnham-Moores Center for Real Estate. "The news in San Diego has been good for so long that a slowing feels like a recession. A lot of metropolitan areas would love to have this economy right now."

Robert Kleinhenz, deputy chief economist for the California Association of Realtors, said that he felt the state as a whole also would be able to "skirt recession" given California's economic and population growth dynamics.

"We are likely to go through the next few years with some bumps and bruises, but the prognosis for the long term is good," said Kleinhenz. "We're in the late stages of an economic expansion, and it's not unusual to hit choppy waters."

During his presentation on the 2008 forecast for the north county coastal region, USD MBA student Craig Choisser quipped, "This might be one of the few times when a flat line is actually good news." Jin Luo, another student in professor Joan Anderson's economic forecasting class, advised in her presentation that, "If you can survive in 2008, then I think you can survive."

A panel of industry representatives provided their own view on how to ride out the tide in the coming months. Joe Anfuso, president of Florsheim Homes, advised attendees to take a hard look at the bottom line. "I'm looking at cash every day," he said. "If you're not looking at cash, you're not doing the right thing in this market."

Dan Holbrook, president of real estate consulting firm Protivity, said that real estate professionals need to "increase the bandwidth of solutions" to the current challenges the industry faces and consider employing solutions used in other industries, such as trading in used cars for newer ones.

"This will be a problem-solving year," he said. If you solve someone else's problem, you solve yours."

Attendees logged their own view of the prognosis for the region's real estate market during the next year by participating in a live interactive survey during the conference. When asked if the area median price for a single-family home throughout San Diego would stay the same, increase or decrease in 2008, a whopping 96 percent of attendees said decrease.

Contact

Jeryldine Tully | jtully@sandiego.edu | 619-260-4786

Web Address

http://www.sandiego.edu/business/centers/real_estate/