Will California Home Prices Drop?

It's been somewhat of a surprise we haven't seen a drop in home prices but we haven't. 

In fact prices (that I've been watching) have actually gone up or remained stable.

 But what are the experts predicting for the near future? Since I'm local to San Diego I'll use that as a starting point.

Zillow, for what it's worth predicts prices will drop  only 0.8% over the next year.  The 5 year chart below shows the nice steady appreciation we've enjoyed followed by a prediction of a not terrible leveling off.

courtesy Zillow

Meanwhile this Orange County Register piece is much more pessimistic about things up there in the OC - forecasting  a 5.2% drop in the next year. That's huge in real estate terms. 

It's a sign of the times that there's no need to say this is all driven by our progress dealing with the Covid-19 virus.

My own interpretation would be we're in a time of great uncertainty. You can see this reflected in the stock market which is a little more reactive than real estate to bad news or good news.

at least CA Real Estate didn't do this!

My conclusion would be that this is at least "not a bad time to sell" if you need to. I wouldn't sell if I don't need to (I'm still pro CA real estate long term), but  if I had to sell I wouldn't feel bad about doing it today.

I note that this is just my personal opinion and not investment advice. Let me know yours in the comments below.