Real estate forecast from the Old House Fair in South Park

House Calls | Michael Good

In the midst of the drizzle of dismal economic news, there was one bright spot last week: home sales. According to DataQuick, 2,488 houses in San Diego closed escrow last month. You’d have to go back to September 2005, well before the recession, to find a better sales month.

It’s also a measure of how bad the nation’s economic mood has become. The economic recession has become something of a media depression; meaning none of the prognosticators, pundits and economic experts that plague our great nation are willing to declare that the market might have turned a corner. It doesn’t seem to matter that the recession was officially over years ago; no one seems willing to let it die.

It’s like one of those monsters in a summer blockbuster: always ready to spring back to life, even after you’ve gassed it following a self-administered Caesarean section in a hyperbaric chamber in outer space. It’s the “Alien” recession, and it’s never over!

There was none of that economic doom and gloom in evidence at the Old House Fair last Saturday, June 16 in South Park. Though the weather was a bit overcast; not such a bad thing when you’re spending seven hours standing in the middle of 30th Street, encased in a plastic vendor booth talking to homeowners about wood refinishing, as I was.

The fair has evolved over the years, much like the now-desirable – even hip – neighborhood where it’s located. The Old House Fair used to be the place to go if your contractor has been dead for 80 years. Now it’s the place to go if your contractor has been dead for 92 years, and you’d like to try some really good food while sitting in the middle of Beech street on a folding chair listening to local bands.

Whatever the economy might be doing, homeowners are back with a vengeance, ready to swing their sledgehammers; or at least ready to text a contractor and get on with the business of restoring their old houses. I didn’t really expect much of a crowd this year, having succumbed to the media hysterics who told me, repeatedly and in no uncertain terms, to abandon all hope. But those old-house people cannot be dissuaded.

At a brief lull from the crowd at 3 p.m. – after five hours of setting appointments, passing out business cards, taking contact information and answering a slew of questions about wood, stain, finishes, millwork, trees, logging, history, architecture and old houses – I took a drink of water, restocked my business cards and said to my neighbor, “Whew, that was intense,” before it all started up again. The stream of people continued until after 4 p.m., when my fellow vendors began breaking down their displays and 30th Street returned to being a thoroughfare for automobiles, not old-house owners.

Among the questions not asked during the fair: “If I’m upside down on my mortgage, should I just throw up my hands and run screaming into the arms of a real estate foreclosure expert?”

In fact, the mood was surprisingly sunny: contractors reported an up-tick in business (starting, not-so-mysteriously, in May, with a rise in home sales) and homeowners were planning projects. Not necessarily on the scale of the Josh Delvalle House, which I wrote about last month and which was on the Old House Fair home tour. Though there were a few whole-house remodels in the making, more projects were maintenance related, including replacing a couple rotten windows or refinishing a front door.

I asked people who if the real estate market affected their decision to restore their home. The universal answer was no, simply because they planned on living in their houses for a long time.

While most of the homeowners at the fair weren’t making improvements to increase their home’s resale value, a few were getting ready to put their houses on the market and were planning on making changes: to their asking price. If I were in the position to make a prediction – wait a minute, I guess I am – I’d say sellers are beginning to realize they are now in charge. Sunday in the U-T San Diego, Gary London of the London group said it’s going to take seven years for prices to return to pre-recession levels, but I’ll go out on a limb and say that in some areas of North and South Park, this summer they’re going to be partying like it’s 2005.

As for recent homebuyers, there were a few in evidence at the Old House Fair as well, looking for advice on how to restore their lucky finds. The common denominator is that they hadn’t really been looking for an old house to purchase; they just walked in the door and fell in love.

In the middle of the endless economic news cycle, it’s easy to forget that buying a house is an emotional decision. It may be an investment, but it’s also your home. Perhaps there is a silver lining inside the current economic cloud: now that home ownership is no longer the soundest place to put your money – that would be the mattress – it has gone back to being something even more valuable. It’s the place you call home.