The Housing Bubble

Great Blog !

It’s being used in the NAR’s ad campaign RIGHT NOW. Not those exact words, but the same concept.

From the website pricedoutforever.com (can’t verify these quotes, but don’t doubt they were said):

“As prices begin to rise again buyers who do not act now could be making a costly mistake.” National Association of Realtors®

“As a first-time buyer, should I wait until prices go lower to buy a home? No. If you continue to wait, you may never be able to afford to get into the housing market.” National Association of Home Builders

it wasn’t in ads, but it WAS in news articles (even worse).

In San Diego during 2002-2005, you would have newspaper reports with headlines that said “Home prices raise an average of $1,000 per day”.

Then in the article, they would quote the NAR who would say “People are realizing that San Diego is a world class city, and obviously everybody wants to live here. That is reflected in the pricing. Soon San Diego will be a place where only the rich can buy, and the rest will have to rent. Thus, now is the best time to buy before it’s too late”.

Even now they have an ad on the TV where a couple says “We’re really glad we bought this house now, because if we waited we wouldn’t have been able to get it!”

so the short answer is:
the NEWSPAPERS were spewing the “buy or be priced out forever” mantra.

ANd of course, there was David Lereah’s book where on the cover it shows a house taking off out of reach of a family.

http://tinyurl.com/27m4yg

I had a polite argument with two SoCal real estate investors yesterday evening, who were urging me to buy real estate now.

Arguement 1: “You have overthought this.”

Arguement 2: “You can never know the right time to buy.”

Arguement 3: “If you buy now and the market dips, you can ride out the cycle.”

Arguement 4: “No matter what the market does, if you start buying real estate now and renting it out, you will be a millionaire in thirty years.”

I gave up quickly, as I learned long ago that it is impossible to reason with facts and logic against adherents of the SoCal real estate religion.

“Can you afford to wait to buy a home in Salt Lake City? Not with the current pace you can’t.”

http://slcrealestate.blogspot.com/

If that guy’s blog isn’t a camouflaged advertising mechanism I don’t know what it is.

The “housing boom” is still alive and well in Utah. Very discouraging.

My wife and I took a Homebuying 101 class (community night class sort of thing) at a local school a couple months ago, and the realtor that taught the class continues to send her propaganda to my email inbox saying buy now! buy now! If I had known then what I know now I would not have taken that class.

What on earth is that 2.5 million dollar property doing in the middle of that lot!! There must be an interesting story there.

I can’t imagine any residential property in Humble being worth that much. The rich people in Houston do NOT live in Humble.

I suspect the listing is wrong and should be for a commercial property. That I could see, and it’s probably related to expansion for freight carriers at IAH.

Is anybody here a member of foreclosure.com? Is it worth it? It seems like it would take a lot of effort combined with a special type of character to make money on foreclosures and preforeclosures. I’d appreciate any advice, stories, etc. on making money belonging to a site like this.

Great post.

jb

amen

Holy smokes. These guys have to know that there are lots of information vigilantes out there.

Why doesn’t Senator Dodd forget about the public perceptions angle (which is likely to blow up in his face thanks to the point you raised) and just work out a bailout behind the scenes? Since he has his own blog, maybe it will dawn on him that blog commentary may doom hope for milking positive publicity out of bailout out his friends in the investment banking community…

I posted those links to his blog. We’ll see how long they stay up.

He’s pathetic. Does he really think that anybody will vote for him for president on any issue?, let alone this one.

“Kathleen Brown, who is also a Goldman Sachs executive, left late last Friday without any explanation”

Not even the: “ I need to spend more time with the family”?

“Yes as a Senator you should have regulated Goldman Sachs, Merril “Lynch and your other homeboys, but now that it’s April of 2007 it’s a little bit too freakin late to hold hearings and act like you care!”"

Could it be that Pulte, KB Homes, Toll and all the other HB’s have given our “for sale” politicals and their Wall Street money managers really sweet “deals” on home purchases for themselves and their families. What a beautiful way to “buy” access. Kickbacks without a paper trail. Lets say you are the manager of a Mutual Fund or Pension or Crammer, and your daughter needs a nice house in a nice neighborhood. You meet Robert Toll at a party and he just happens to mention this in friendly converation.
Do you think Mr. Toll might relay this info to PR person to make sure they ‘please” Mr. Congressman, Mr. Mutual Fund and Crammer?
And how would you feel about Mr. Congressman when your daughter is beaming about the brand new house she could never afford before you went to that party.

Maybe Karl Marx was right!

Senator Dodd was in the minority and basically powerless from January 2003 - January 2007. Not that he would have done anything if he did have the power but I don’t think it’s fair to criticize him for not doing anything until now, this is his first opportunity to do something.

My main concern is that he is building up to a bait and switch. First he holds hearings on the poor FBs and builds up momentum that “something must be done”. Then he reluctantly comes to the conclusion that nothing can be done directly to help the FBs so we’ll have to help the banks(literally, his constituents) instead.

I’m no fan of this nitwit, but if you think that banks giving money to campaign of the Chairman of the Senate Committee on Banking is some kind of smoking gun, you need to take politics 101.

Hey Arlington:

You should send this information to your local paper.

-Big V

Here is a bailout suggestion for Senator Dodd: Create an information service (maybe even start a blog) to help foreclosed buyers locate attorneys starting class action suits against lenders who defrauded them. If the lenders are already out of business, the information service could help direct the class action attorneys to the hedge funds and investment banks that were the kingpins behind these deals. Dodd could collect his godfather protection fee from the class action attorneys instead of the banksters.

“Don’t get me wrong. I think rigging the financial markets is a good thing when the nation’s security is at risk.
…
If you want everyone to be aware that Treasury is on the ball and ready to come to Wall Street’s rescue, why not turn over the documents I’ve requested?”

Sadly, I believe Crudele’s second FOIA request is likely to be ignored. But perhaps I can at least take a stab at addressing the issue he raised. The whole premise of the current presidency since 9/11 is that we are a nation under attack from a global band of terrorists. Hence we are, indeed, at risk, and by Crudele’s own logic, the PPT should have cart blanche to manipulate the markets as it sees fit.

The chickens are coming next door to roost!

Yup, the WSJ says inventories rose from February to March by an above average amount, with a particularly large increase in LA.

I guess it’s spring now, and we’ll see how it goes. Did we used up the knife catchers last year? If is the entire U.S. supply here in NYC?

In the Sacramento area, inventory is almost exactly where it was 2 months later than this time last year. We’re well on track to easily shatter the records this year.

“Middle class” implies they have at least some assets, which means they could find an apartment to rent. “Formerly middle class” might be a better term.

I recently read on article about that. I honestly believe that our current monetary system is destroying our communities. The housing bubble has to be put in context with the overall monetary system. This is not a “subprime” problem. Our entire society has cancer. The only way to cure it is to cut off the head of the beast and return to an honest monetary system. It’s about honest weights and measures, folks.

–
Let us build more public libraries as fast as we can! This would be the lowest cost solution to the problem of crime during recession that would turn into depression.

Jas

Funny, Aladinsane, I never thought of you as someone who has a mom.

aladinsane, why am I not surprised. I take my kids to the local library about once a week and hang out while they play. Lately, I’ve overheard cell phone conversations related to real estate containing sentences such as “then we’re going under” and “is there something you can do to help us?” several times. Looking at those people, you could not think they are anything other than solid middle class. It makes my hair stand on end when I see that, but it could be only anecdotal. The Westside is different, right?

Easy come, easy go.

Really, there must be an endless supply of GFs.

That will buy what, a 3-bedroom tract house in SoCal? Or 2 of the same in Phoenix?

If he wants to pee his money away, he could just mail it to me. I can think of better uses for that million.

My bet is the casino folks will lure him back into the casino and will get their jackpot back. And then some.

And if all he did was put that 1.3 million into short term treasuries, he’d have about 60,000 a year. Most people could live comfortably on that. And yet he’s going to stick into the RE sinkhole at the top. Priceless.

This just points up what has been said on this blog in so many ways: “If you lend it, they will spend it.” In this case, the guy is getting the money from a casino instead of the bank, but it’s the same idea. People with no clue spending whatever money they can get on whatever asset they most recently heard good things about.

So the previous line, that the trouble is only in the sub-prime is already falling apart. I wonder when they will admit that the problem is not in the type of loan, but in the fact that RE was overpriced and incomes at all levels except the very top did not keep up

The housing bubble was driven by contagion, and so is the housing bust (the “bad sister”)…

I used to sit around a read quote books a lot. i like this one

Excellent quote. I’ll have to remember that and apply it in my life with some thought and discipline.

Alternate tie-in to the housing bubble: he died of hot air during the explosive housing bust of Pompeii

Not completely off topic. If sales tank, the NAR will blame it on the “blizzard.”

85 on Tuesday. 29 today.

We are in the “hanging on” phase of the cycle correction, when those who don’t have to sell try to wait out the bust, and those who are relatively more desperate are either selling into weakness or waiting until they get foreclosed because they are too far underwater for selling to make sense.

It pretty much happens this way in every real estate bust, though I believe the relatively larger number of crazy loans made this time will mean the number of fire sales (and resulting price declines) will be larger this time than in previous busts. The fact that prices have fallen on a national level so early in the correction (and are predicted to fall further) should offer a clue.

(Realtor-listed numbers are an increasingly-smaller percentage of total homes on the market. )

Does this mean Realtor reported sales prices will be a smaller share of actual sales? That will affect the NAR median.

My guess is there will be a lot more FSBO and “Assist to Sell” type of listings that don’t show up on the MLS. Many have simply run out of equity to finance the Realtors Lexus payments at a 6% commission rate.

Heck I’ll bet some of the Realtors (also known as RE investor maximus) are going FSBO. LOL

Would the difference be whether a bank or trustee was doing the sale? ISTM that if you declare bankrupcy BEFORE your non-owner occupied property got to foreclosure, the trustee would be in charge of selling the property and divvying up any assets. Does the bank still get absoloute first crack at any proceeds in this case, or they in with the rest of the creditors demanding their money.

“mark of pride?”

Myopia

My bet is they’re all comparing current data locally with recent data (last month or last quarter) nationally. Foreclosures are rising so fast everywhere that almost any such comparison will make it look like you’re leading the nation!

Charlottesville, Virginia
5 April 2007

Ronin;
I think the answer to your question is not the rates of foreclosure has become a mark of civic pride for the lumpenproletariat, but rather that things are starting to get so bad all around the country, in very diverse geographical areas, that the sheer amount of distressed properties and ‘homeowners” going belly up is reaching truly shocking proportions. After all, it would seem that many of our fellow citizens bought into the fairy tale that “real estate always goes up” and everyone should “buy now or be priced out forever.” One week it’s Colorado, another it’s Massachussetts, the next it’s Florida. That fact of the matter is, ALL of these markets are seeing foreclosure rates previously unimagined by the MSM (but not much of a surprise to you and the rest of us who have been frequent habitues of this blog). I fear this housing Ponzi scheme that constitutes the bulk of our economy, like all Ponzi schemes, is going to end badly for a good many folks…folks who were absolutely certain that their house was not only a castle, but the key to riches beyond the dreams of avarice. After all, the conventional wisdom of “If I need cash, why I can just take out a HELOC” was the widely accepted norm for so long. This is what happens to an entitled and relatively short sighted majority of our population believed, particularly if they believe they DESERVE that Vegas vacation, a custom Harley and a 10 mpg SUV.
One anectode I would like to share. As it so happens, I work in a local hospital, and was taking care of someone who had come in for treatment recently for a serious medical ailment. While he was recovering from his therapy, I was engaged in a rather substantial conversation with a colleague regarding the mortgage/real estate meltdown that is currently sweeping the nation, and specifically mentioned that interest rates are more than likely going to have to rise to compensate for this ecomonic Russian Roulette our society has insisted on playing. Of course, the patient (an older gentleman being treated for a potentially life threatening ailment) overheard my our conversation, and asked me further why I thought this would happen. So, as I explained in excrutiating detail just how cheap money had become, Alan Greenspan’s and Ben Bernanke’s overheating printing presses and the general inability of anyone of modest means to afford a home without getting into some kind of highly radioactive mortgage, I could see he was becoming even more uncomfortable, breaking out into cold sweat and turning pale as a ghost. Thinking he was suffering some kind of side effect of the treatment he had just had, I interupted my explanation and asked him if he was in pain, to which he replied he had recently taken out a substantial HELOC on the place he and his wife had owned and lived in for a number of years on terms that were “not real good” (his words, not mine) and was a good bit freaked out at their ability to repay it.
I abruptly changed the subject to this years prospects to win the world series (”How about those Red Sox, eh?) thinking the last thing I needed to do was save his life from Cancer only to have him go into cardiac arrest from the stress of his messed up finances. Multiply his financial ineptitude by several million, and I think the enormity of the problem becomes apparent.
Moral of this story;
Don’t talk about basic housing economics with critically ill people. Your are more than likely to kill them than enlighten them.

Your most humble servant,
SubKommander Dred

If people thought scams were bad during the bubble, they ain’t seen NUTHIN’ yet! As the bust unwinds and the economy really goes into the crapper, scams will proliferate like mad. Economic downturns are when scammers REALLY shine, feeding off desperation and false hopes.

I got a good scam call a couple of days ago, they said I had “won” an all expense paid 6 day vacation in Mexico, all I had to do was pay the hotel “tax” of $49.99 per person, per day, plus I would have to pay to get to Mexico

As the dot-com bubble imploded, I read an article from Silicon Valley that talked about the desperation of people who were caught up in the melt-down: losing a job, getting a divorce, losing their stock portfolios, and very often having a vehicle repossessed in the process.

One of the interesting anecdotes of the car repossessors was that they very often found a batch of recent lottery tickets in the vehicles when they repossessed them. It was as if that became the signature act of desperation: go down to the convenience store and try to score one more hit on the gravy train….

“Lastly, I have pinpointed March as when the recession started, but this is simply the warm up. Perhaps the data dispensers will pick it up two months on down the road with revisions or catch ups. Rasmussen consumer confidence polls picked up a big initial drop. April 4th showed 111.9.”

I’m guessing the plan is to suppress any evidence of a recession by whatever means is necessary (including making the stock market always go up) right on through the 2008 election season. Why would this not be the plan, and if it is the plan, what stands in the way?

“JAGOW: And then you think that after the prices start to fall, the Fed may step in and cut interest rates?

FARRELL: That’s what I think is going to happen. I mean, look, despite all their talking about inflation, they well know come spring or after the spring and when they look at that home-buying season and look at what’s happening to prices, the Fed’s gonna cut.”

Farrell wrote a nice book about deflation, which explains the reasoning behind his belief (which I share). One interpretation of the housing bubble is that it is a direct consequence of the extremes to which the Greenspan Fed was willing to go in order to avoid deflation.

I agree with Farrell’s prediction for a 20% home price decline (in fact, I believe we are already there in my hood, though nothing much is selling to provide evidence). The only question, IMO, is how much the nominal prices go down, given the Fed’s likely efforts to try to respike the broken punch bowl.

http://www.harpercollins.com/books/9780060576455/Deflation/index.aspx

He miscalculated.

He said that in 2003 prices were reasonable based on fundamentals, like low interest rates. Interest rates are higher now, so this implies more than a 20% decline, unless interest rates are cut, which get you back to 20%.

Not only that, but overbuilding might drive prices far lower than 2003 in non-bubble areas.

Home prices have already fallen more than 20% in quite a few places. Perhaps the overall nationwide average will be 20%, since some places never got so crazy to begin with. But the biggest bubble markets–I’m guessing 40%.

–

Chick,

To be popular, one must behave in a manner that is liked by large number of people. At least, Mish is better than more popular charlatans in the economic commentary business.

Jas

Amusing to me, too. I remember when he was just another guy posting on Motley Fool. He was basically an angry guy who posted a lot of links to other people’s work. Same as now, from what I can tell. (Which is not to say he’s wrong, of course.)

Maybe it’s an NYC thing. We’re having a, hopefully, last-gasp “surge” here. Absolutely nauseating. Can’t even read local blogs without feeling like wretching.

People are snapping bargains.

I think it’s always unwise to read too much into daily swings in stock prices. The overall trend is rather obvious, I’d say.

Ryland came out with a negative report on earnings… the HB’s usually rise on negative news.

Cyberhomes is a joke! It has my house valued 50% higher than zillow, which is already over estimated for the market by at least 20%. And I thought zillow was inaccurate.

Trishyla

LOL — It’s great.

http://www.curbed.com/archives/2007/04/05/real_estate_roller_coaster_1890present.php

I’ll bring the Brats!

Sale history (from Zillow):

10/01/1998: $369,000
03/30/2006: $925,000

Maybe a flip gone bad?

(Also, notice the 1998 price, just 8 years ago)

lainvestorgirl: That’s ridiculous. Is that typical?

I wouldn’t give credit the comparison of list price to sold price. It is absolutely in the best interest of a broker to convince you that he can accurately price your house to sell. (Those mailings are trolling for both buyers and sellers.) Choosing any convenient number for the after-the-fact list price is easily done.

The thing to check are the traditional measures: price/sqft, median, similar house comparison, etc.

Or Brooklyn! Bidding wars, the horror! I cashed out and paid off my shack in the Catskills, but a 6-hour round-trip commute doesn’t sound like too much fun. Especially with $4 a gallon gas in the pipeline.

I’m doing my best to try and monkey-wrench this with comments in the local blogs, but looks like we need more like-minded “bitter” renters to turn this madness around.

BROOKLYN HEIGHTS $1,429,000
66 Orange Street, Apt. 2E
Prewar three-bedroom, two-bath duplex co-op, 1,600 square feet, with wood-burning brick fireplace, open dining area, updated windowed eat-in kitchen, high ceilings, French doors and Juliet balcony on lower level; building features roof deck, laundry and storage. Maintenance $1,485.12, 49 percent tax-deductible. Asking price $1,350,000, on market 19 weeks.

“here on Long Island”

I believe that the correct pronunciation is “Lon Guyland”.

There is NO BUBBLE bursting here on Long Island!… in some cases people still bid over list!

From conversations with people on Long Island, homeowners are nervous, and rightly so.

A friend’s house finally got sold on Long Island recently. It took 9 months and the price was only slightly over 2003 purchase price, barely enough to break even.

“Pay raises have been blah for several years running. If you’re looking for inflation signs, you need look no further than February’s 1.3 percent gain in producer prices and 0.4 percent rise in consumer prices. But you can look at the accelerating price of manufacturing supplies reported by companies across many industries in the Institute for Supply Management. Or just check what you’re paying for health care, college tuition, gasoline or that monthly mortgage.”

Lets see ” health care, college tuition, gasoline or that monthly mortgage”, aren’t these excluded from the CPI?
“Money still talks these days! Trouble is, you have to increase the volume alot!”
Alfred E Neumann

What are the MORONS thinking???????

Its at least 10 blocks to the closest subway and at Court St and walking on Joralemon at night is not what i would want from a million dollar apartment.

Maybe if they offered FREE 24 hour shuttle bus or a newly created free ferry to the seaport…….and then I’ll be You have to pay EXTRA to park your car.

I’m not a NYer, but the first time I drove up there and took a gander at Brooklyn while driving the BQE was a real eye-opener. “Million-dollar apartments” was NOT the first thought that came to mind.

And it’s insane how close the BQE sits to some of those buildings. Just what I want: a prime view of some of the worst traffic known to mankind.

You could make a lot of new houses out of one giant sequoia. There’s plenty of central valley farmland near the National Park that could be put to higher use.

aladinsane,

Quit rubbing it in… I’m jealous that you get to hop over the back fence like John Muir.

The largest oldest living thing. (I guess you qualified it by saying: “largest”)

As bugs would say: eh, I don’t think so…

The Ancient Bristlecone Pine Forest, located in the White Mountains of California, is home to the oldest known living trees on earth, the Great Basin Bristlecone Pine Pinus longaeva. The oldest tree, nicknamed “Methuselah”, is more than 4,750 years old, and is not marked to ensure added protection from vandals. The grove lies in the Inyo National Forest, between 3,000-3,300 m (10,000-11,000 feet) above sea level.

Being that a lot of trees are used in housing there’s this:

An even more un-Western Taoist notion is the usefulness of uselessness. Chuang Tze frequently illustrates this idea with a giant and rather twisted tree. A woodcutter, speaking to his apprentice, says: “That tree has no potential whatsoever. It’s useless: you can’t make anything with it. How do you think it’s lived so long?”3 Precisely because of its uselessness, the tree has been able to live a long life and contemplate the Tao, as contrasted with useful trees, which are used up before they can reach that level. When a man bemoans the uselessness of another giant tree, Chuang Tze advises him:

“Now you’ve got this huge tree, and you agonize over how useless it is. Why not plant it in a village where there’s nothing at all, a land where emptiness stretches away forever? Then you could be no one, drifting lazily beside it, roam boundless and free as you doze in its shade. It won’t die young from the ax. Nothing will harm it. If you have no use, you have no grief.”4

This uselessness is an aspect of withdrawing from the conventional world of trivialities to embrace the true nature of the world with spontaneity. These great trees represent an important aspect of the Taoist sage: useless to the physical world, they are free to pursue their spiritual growth in the Tao—which is infinitely more valuable.

This sort of uselessness is antithetical to the West; the only useless things we find to be at all valuable are various arts, and we still value art more if it can also be useful. The notion that to pursue the truly valuable and fulfilling life we need to be (or at least it helps to be) useless sounds pretty crazy to us. If America were to adopt this sort of value for uselessness, it would certainly do wonders for our collective blood pressure and stress level, and it would certainly be more civilized lifestyle. A quote from Lin Yutang that I have always resonated with addresses this: “If you can spend a perfectly useless afternoon in a perfectly useless manner, you have learned how to live.” I assume he is referring to this sort of Taoist uselessness. In American life, I believe such a virtue of uselessness would translate into a greater aesthetic appreciation and a more Continental pace—both things I would consider improvements.

http://prism-perfect.net/archive/taoism-morality-sage/

Now aladinsane, put that in your pipe and go smoke it…on your next hop over the backyard fence.

Aladinsane, the sequoias and the earth survived, but the Anasazi didn’t. Earth will always find its own balance and find a way to get rid of what’s bothering her, like the Maya, or ourselves. That is the thing that people don’t understand and it drives me nuts. We are the ultimate parasytes.

“Darrell Mosely, who lives across the street, says the house at 419 was not the first to burn. He points to one farther down the block that’s burned twice (That one, according to Fire Marshal Jordan, was caused by faulty wiring).”

Wouldn’t it be ironic if the crappy workmanship on new homes comes to the resque of the FBs? Soon there will be Blogs with instructions on how to do it, like “in KB homes, turn on the toaster, the light and the microwave and run for cover”.

Burned out homes here in nor cal during the mid 90’s were common. Ill bet that in 92-95 we had three times the fires than the other 7 years of the decade combined.

boo-hoo,

Stupidity is meaningless in the face of Foreclosure

In most states, renters have limited rights in a foreclosure. I think most likely you’d be given a 30-day eviction notice by the bank at some point.

Tee hee - the Japanese are invading!

Very very nice. Couldn’t have said it better myself. I’ll probably be sending one of these soon.

sweet, where do I sign the papers I’m not gonna read, in order to maintain my “victim” status after I default?

I flagged it as prohibited, since the guy is promising to get an appraisal for a certain amount, which is illegal.

For those who don’t know, Arlington Heights is probably an hour commute to Chicago (although it’s residents will always claim 40 minutes). It’s a nice, middle class area, but it is not the North Shore or another snobby Chicago suburb. According to ziprealty, there are over 800 homes for sale out there (many spec homes).

The cheap and easy flow of information will not influence the majority of sellers or buyers. It will be sticky on the way down. In stock market collapses, there is liquidity. One may not like losing 25 - 50% of the previous days price, but there is little emotional attachment. For most individual stock traders the margin is 50%. In houses the margin can be 100%. Houses are an emotional issue. We have discussed the “its different here” syndrome and no matter how much information is placed into the specuvestors, flippers and FBs possession, these owners have the lack of ability to assimilate the information and turn it into knowledge. This inability to assimilate and use the information is called cognitive dissonance.

Houses are not liquid, they are not “tradable”; houses will not be sold because of “the market will always come back” phenomena, most recently seen in buyers of New Century (including those buying an opening position today).

It has taken 6 yrs for the stock market to get back to the highs of 1999 (not adjusting for inflation). It will take twice as long after the bottom for houses to reach 2005 highs. IMHO The bottom may not occur for 10 -15 years.

Buy this burger now, or you will be priced out forever!!

I feel bad that so many of these association groups are losing their group coverage. Apparently those in good health can find better insurance for less money, so the remaining group members tend to be sicker and older. Blue Shield doesn’t want to provide the expensive health care needed by the remaining members, so they agree only to cover the group if 75% of the members enroll. Apparently the realtors left are fewer than this. We can laugh about this, but we are heading for a breaking point. The rest of us end up paying for the uninsured’s medical expenses through our premiums, taxes, and medical bills. Currently only 62% of workers receive employer-provided health insurance in this country, down from 70% ten years ago. When we reach 50%, the voters will scream loudly for national health insurance.

Good response, hllnwiz, but the tinyurl didn’t work for me.

I’ll try it again, not-so-tiny, and tiny versions. Then again, this article is so annoying, you may not want to read it.

http://www.ocregister.com/ocregister/homepage/abox/article_1638814.php

http://tinyurl.com/2qdvgs

Great catch.
That Farallon “doubled up” to protect its prior position now looks like suicide. If my math is correct 50% of nothing is nothing.

San Diego inventory is up 10.7% in just over one month (since Feb 28) — from 15,000 to 16,600. I am wondering if this inventory correction will get so fast that even the RE bulls will have to start referring to it as a “crash?”