Risk of Falling Prices Up "Sharply" for San Joaquin County

From Stockton's RecordNet:

A new report by a Bay Area-based mortgage insurance company gives a 53.9 percent probability that home valuations in San Joaquin County will decline within the next 2 years, basically because high-rising home prices have outstripped local incomes...

The San Joaquin County's risk is up sharply from the third quarter of 2004, when there was a 38.4 percent probability of home-valuation declines within two years...In San Joaquin County, it takes about a third more income, after adjusting for inflation, to make a median monthly mortgage bill payment than it did in 1995, a base year set by PMI for the index...

Since November, some local real-estate brokers and agents started predicting slight sales-price declines this year as the number of homes for sale have climbed steadily since May, increasing competition among sellers and pressuring prices to flatten, if not drop.