Wow that Went Quickly!
Seems not long ago there were plenty of condos in Downtown San Diego for buyers to choose from. There were about 250 resales on the market and 200 brand new unsold condos to choose from. That was a true statement from 2017 till about 2019. Then the brand new condo inventory began to shrink quickly and went to zero new units available in summer of 2021.
The number of resale choices has remained very steady for the last few years, even during Covid lock-downs it remained steady. After the brand new condos got sold out in the two new buildings (Pacific Gate and Savina) the buyers were limited to resales and began buying them up.
Post pandemic lockdowns of both public venues and building amenities the number of buyers looking to purchase a condo in Downtown San Diego has increased significantly. One of the reasons for that is a lot of workers can work remotely anywhere and as more people retired and an expedited rate with Covid they want to move here for the weather and walkability.
Add the lack of new construction with an increasing number of buyers chasing less and less inventory and its getting to a crisis level where buyers have very limited choices now in Downtown. As of Sept 20, 2021 there are only 128 condos for sale. Inventory has not been this limited in over 15 years.
If your a buyer I have some good news and some bad news:
First the bad news: There are two huge construction projects (The Campus at Horton and The RaDD) going on in downtown San Diego that will add thousands of new jobs and a lot of those new employees will want to buy a condo downtown to live in, so you will have a lot of competition looking at the same condos you are and perhaps also bidding on the same one you want to buy.
New the good news: Those new employees are not in the market yet, they wont begin working in downtown for another year or so. So you have time to shop around before the choices of what to buy shrinks even more. You also have the opportunity to purchase a condo now that will probably be in more demand in the next few years causing its value to climb over the price you pay today.
