The La Mesa real estate market, a subsidiary of the San Diego real estate market, continued to show signs of strength and recovery throughout April and March 2010. According to a May 19, 2010 article in the San Diego Union-Tribune, “San Diego County may have passed the peak in the distressed housing market, as the mortgage delinquency rate dropped for the first time in four years, new reports showed Wednesday.” The article, written by Roger Showley, continued to note that “The Mortgage Bankers Association said mortgage payments at least 30 days late nationally dropped one percentage point to 9.4 percent from the first quarter, while still leaving 4.4 million mortgages in technical default. California’s rate dropped from 11.3 percent to 10.9 percent and 629,000 owners late. TransUnion, a credit-reporting agency, reported a similar dip, adding that California and San Diego were off the peak at the end of last year.”

The average price of a La Mesa or San Diego home for sale is one of the strongest indicators of the overall health of the region’s real estate market. According to a May 27, 2010 article from SDNN, “In this volatile – and frequently gloomy – housing market, San Diego stands out as a metropolitan city with continued growth in home prices, says a Standard & Poor’s/Case-Shiller Home Price Index released Tuesday.” The piece by Annu Subramanian went on to say that “The study highlighted that despite many metropolitan cities reporting new index lows, San Diego boats an eleven-month streak of increasing home prices. Of the 20 national metropolitan cities studied, San Diego’s 10.8 percent increase in home prices since March 2009 is only surpassed by San Francisco’s 16.2 percent increase.”

This overall health of the La Mesa real estate market was reflected by the general strength of the San Diego economy. According to a May 27, 2010 article from the San Diego Union-Tribune found that “A strengthening market pushed San Diego County’s leading economic indicators higher for the 13^th month in a row, indicating that the county will continue to grow moderately through the end of the year, according to a report released Thursday by the University of San Diego’s Burnham-Moores Center for Real Estate.”