July 16, 2008
Santa Clara County Stats (May'08)
(c)
View from Silicon Valley, 2008. All rights reserved.
The paper
published this months' (May'08) statistics last Sunday.
Let's cut right to the chase with the "highlights:"
Bankruptcy
filings continue to grow. Bankruptcy filings in the Northern District of California rose in May for the
fourth consecutive month, something that last happened more than two years ago shortly after bankruptcy reforms were enacted.
Local stock jump in May is history
now. Local stocks managed a third consecutive monthly gain in May, but what March, April and May gave
in gains in the value of the 150 largest companies in Silicon Valley, June mostly took away.
Housing units jump on Sunnyvale development.
The number of new housing units approved in May for Santa Clara County lept to the highest level since August 2007, due primarily
to units approved to be built as part of the Sunnyvale Town Center, a major retail-office-housing development under construction
on the site of a former shopping mall at the intersection of South Mathilda and Iowa avenues in downtown Sunnyvale.
Price decline in homes continues.
(Although the decline in the monthly table was magically $4K less than the figure reported by DataQuick
in their monthly press release.) May marked the fifth consecutive month of year-over-year price declines
in the median sale price of single-family homes in Santa Clara County. (May was the 15th consecutive month
of year-over-year volume declines.) Home sales continued their seasonal gains month to month but continued to
be down from the same period the year before.
...
Jobless numbers spike. The jobless rate in
the San Jose region hit its highest level in more than three years. The number of unemployed jumped above 50,000 for
the first time since February 2005. (But their table shows the same 46,200 unemployed as the previous
month? Working backwards from the reported 5.6% unemployment rate, the actual figure is 50,127.)
Commercial space for lease growing.
The amount of office space available for lease grew in May for the fourth month in a row, while R&D space for lease grew
for the first time in three months. (We continue to insist these Office/R&D stats are manipulated.
Believing the figures are accurate requires believing there was effectively zero new Office/R&D space added
since October, 2002 --AS IF!!!) Together the two property types saw available space grew 2.1 percent from the month
before, the biggest since January.
Conclusion:
The spin can no longer cover up weakness in these figures. House prices and employment and local stocks and bankruptcies
and even the long-manipulated Office/R&D stats ALL show weakness.
Oddly, nobody seems to make a big deal about
it. (Except us, of course.)
