The Housing Bubble

A report from the Los Angeles Times in California. “Bidding wars are common and prices are rising during the popular spring buying season. A report out Tuesday from CoreLogic shows the Southern California median home price jumped 7.1% in March from a year earlier, hitting $480,000 in the six-county area. And despite low inventory, sales rose 7.8%. When Elizabeth Rodriguez and her husband realized that the market was white-hot in the Northeast L.A. burbs where they wanted to raise their three children, they devised a strategy. The couple began writing a ‘love letter’ to sellers describing how much they wanted the house. And then they bid over asking — way, way over asking.”

“In one case, they offered $102,000 above the $798,000 list price for a three-bedroom Spanish-style home in Mount Washington. The house sold to someone else for $985,000. ‘After that I was like, this is insane,’ said the 35-year-old mother of three. The couple bid on 11 homes, she said, before they finally purchased a three-bedroom in the hills of Glassell Park listed at $799,900. To seal the deal, they again bid about $100,000 over asking, this time before an open house was held. ‘It was a crazy process,’ Rodriguez said. ‘I’m glad we are on the other side of it.’”

The Union Tribune. “The San Diego County median home price reached $515,000 in March, its highest point in a decade and a 7.7 percent increase in a year, CoreLogic reported. The median price had been below half a million dollars since October last year, which had some analysts surmising costs had hit an affordability wall. But, the March numbers show some buyers are willing to go higher to get homes. ‘Home prices are going up faster than household incomes,’ said Mark Goldman, finance and real estate lecturer at San Diego State University.”

“Many analysts, including Goldman, say the market is not heading for a housing bubble because the last crash was built on riskier loans. ‘I don’t see any speculative value in the market. We’re seeing very cautious underwriting when it comes to appraisals,’ he said. ‘Even though people are anxious to get into the market, it’s not one of those markets where any fool who wants to buy can buy.’”

The LA Daily News. “If you want to buy a home in the San Fernando Valley, make sure you’ve got money — lots of it. The median price of a home in the area hit $671,500 — the highest ever on record for March. The last time a home’s median cost — the price at which half the homes are less and half are more – was this high in the area it was June 2007, when the housing bubble was about to burst and the median was $655,000, according to the Southland Regional Association of Realtors report.”

“The new median price number for March was up 13.3 percent from a year ago, and was a definite leap from most of 2016, when the median price was stuck in the $600,000s, according to the association. Back then, buyers resisted paying more, and the ‘pool’ of buyers who could afford such prices had constricted.”

“But the new numbers are in another galaxy compared to the low point not so long ago. Just take March 2011, after the bubble had burst in the midst of the Great Recession: The median cost of a single-family home in the San Fernando Valley was $370,000, according to the association. And if you go way back to March 1998, the median price of a single-family home in the San Fernando Valley was a whopping $180,000.”

From KRON-TV. “In San Francisco and San Mateo Counties, a family of four making $105,350 or less is now considered low income by the federal government Department of Housing and Urban Development. That means they can qualify for affordable housing. ‘They are eligible now to apply for housing through the local housing authority, be it Section 8, be it public housing, or other HUD-subsidized programs,’ HUD Regional Public Affairs Officer and Homeless Liaison Ed Cabrera told KRON-TV.”

“The income limits in the Bay Area are the highest of any area in the country, Cabrera said. In neighboring Santa Clara County, low income starts at $84,000. Contra Costa County is at about $80,000. For Napa, it is $74,000. And for Solano, it is $64,000.”

The San Francisco Chronicle. “California dreaming? Hardly. Mattresses on sidewalks, moving vans in driveways and hasty garage sales hint at a trend Bay Area residents have long suspected – exodus. Real estate brokerage site Redfin released its annual ‘migration report’ and found that those residing in San Francisco Metro are the most likely to leave. The catalyst for moving – high housing costs – should surprise no one.”

“San Francisco recorded the highest ‘net outflow’ – the number of potential homebuyers looking to move to San Francisco Metro subtracted from the number of those who want to leave. The region’s outflow was double that of New York.”

The Marin Independent Journal. “The California Association of Realtors reported Monday that pending sales in the Bay Area were down in March for the sixth straight month on a year-over-year basis. Redfin’s new report shows the San Francisco metro area has the highest ‘net outflow’ of users: 15,087. That figure is the difference between the number of potential homebuyers who want to move to the San Francisco metro area and the number who want to leave it; a lot more want to leave than come.”

“New York had the second highest ‘net outflow,’ followed by Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., and Chicago.”

The Coachella Valley Independent. “Despite a growing economy and decreasing unemployment, the homeless population in the Coachella Valley is expanding—at an alarming rate. The annual Riverside County ‘point in time’ count in January showed the homeless population had increased from 1,351 unsheltered and 814 sheltered individuals in 2016, to 1,638 unsheltered and 775 sheltered in 2017.”

“The Coachella Valley cities had 297 homeless individuals in 2016—and 425 individuals in 2017. Another alarming fact: The number of homeless individuals locally without shelter is about to rise, because Roy’s Resource Center, the only shelter for the homeless on the west end of the Coachella Valley, is slated to close at the end of June. The beleaguered facility in North Palm Springs is shutting its doors largely because some local city governments have not been paying their share to keep Roy’s financially solvent.”

“The closure will undoubtedly lead to a significant increase in the number of unsheltered homeless—at the time of year when shelter is needed most. ‘We just had a ‘point in time’ count, and it shows that if we look at the nine valley cities, the increase in homelessness in the Coachella Valley is 43 percent: We went from 297 to 425. That’s huge. If Roy’s closes down, and we have no provision for the 90 people it currently houses, the increase is even more dramatic, because we’re talking about going from 297 to 515, and that’s crazy,’ said Sabby Jonathan, the mayor pro tem of Palm Desert.”

From KQED News. “Augie Cortez and his wife, Blanca, bought a little slice of the American Dream about 17 years ago in Bloomington, a working-class community in San Bernardino about 50 miles east of Los Angeles. Their roomy four-bedroom house was the very first on the block of a brand-new subdivision not unlike scores of others that began carpeting Inland Southern California toward the end of the 1990s. The Cortezes gathered up their savings and managed to put up a healthy down payment on a 15-year mortgage. After a couple of other home purchasing efforts collapsed, they were eager to make this one stick and they wanted to pay it off fast.”

“Monthly payments would be high. But the name of the little cul-de-sac seemed like a good omen: Dream Street. And for a while, the dream was good. With so much homebuilding going on, it was easy for just about anyone to get a mortgage back then, even if you had shaky credit or no job at all. Low-income minority neighborhoods like the ones around Dream Street were ripe targets for subprime lenders.”

“Augie and his wife had a sound conventional loan, but still got dragged under in a housing crisis that would ultimately steamroll through neighborhoods across the country. In 2006, the last of the brand-new homes on Dream Street sold for about $430,000. Three years later, at the peak of the mortgage meltdown, the same home was worth barely a quarter of that.”

“It was the same story up and down the block and across the region as the bubble burst on the housing market and people couldn’t afford their mortgages. Even people like Augie Cortez, who didn’t have mortgages spring-loaded with dangerous adjustable rates and hidden fees, were dragged down. Construction work vanished and Cortez’s cement finishing jobs dried up.”

“To put food on the table Cortez sold lumber and other items online. He did odd jobs for neighbors. Mortgage payments got skipped for months. Default notices were dropping into mailboxes across the neighborhood — including his own. ‘Just walk away, that’s what people were doing, just walking away,’ he says, recalling what it was like then.”

“Local real estate experts warn that Inland Empire housing is once again way overvalued, and overdue for a ‘correction.’ Prices have surged to an unsustainable level in the last year, according to Neighborhood Housing Services of the Inland Empire, a nonprofit that helped guys like Augie hold onto their houses 10 years ago.”

“At the edge of those vacant lots, a sign lashed to a post beckons with a come-on that sounds a little suspicious, given what this neighborhood has survived over the last decade: ‘Buy a Home, 1% Down.’ There’s no name for a real estate agent or mortgage broker. But there’s a local phone number. I give it a call. ‘Hi, this is Emily your friendly real estate professional,’ chirps a pre-recorded message. ‘Buying a home has never been easier! Here’s how it works,’ continues Emily. ‘You put down 1 percent and your lender 2 percent toward your down payment, which puts you on your way to home ownership.’”

“Emily asks me to leave my number and a good time to call back. I don’t. But I do find out more about that sign, and about new trends in home loans that are stoking old fears.”