You Never Know When The Glass Is Empty In California
KMPH reports from California. “An inventory closeout auction in Chowchilla, Sunday afternoon, placed high-end homes in the reach of buyers in need of a break. In a time when home sales are low and foreclosure rates high, Michael and Hermosa Dopheide landed their 4-bedroom home. It was previously priced at $319,000 but they bought it for a flat $200,000. ‘We’re both teachers and we don’t really have a lot of cash, so we have to be really very discriminate in the way we use it,’ said Hermosa.”
“Michael says he’s confident he and his wife have made a smart investment. ‘The price is right and I think it’s an up-and-coming market so I’m taking a little risk but I think it’s a good one for our future,’ said Michael.”
The Fresno Bee. “Instead of the familiar auctions for foreclosed properties in the central San Joaquin Valley, this one featured new houses with varying degrees of amenities — such as lakefront views and a golf course.”
“A 4,002-square-foot home with four bedrooms, 31/2 bathrooms and an option for a separate guest house was priced at $470,000 — instead of the original $734,000. On the other end, a 1,436-square-foot home with three bedrooms and two bathrooms was listed at $160,000 instead of $304,000.”
“These were the actual minimum prices, which meant a home would sell as long as there was one bid. This practice differs from some auctions of foreclosed homes. By the end of the event, 22 of the 31 homes up for auction had owners.”
“Some homes sold for their minimum prices, such as a 2,350-square-foot house with three bedrooms and two-and-a-half bathrooms in The Cascades. Lisa Magee jumped up and down, squealing, after her father-in-law bought the home for $320,000. (Its original price was $484,000.)”
“‘Oh, I’m shaking,’ she said afterward.”
“Sales of homes in the two developments were robust for about 11/2 year until they slowed down a year ago. ‘We lowered the prices so far to make it attractive,’ said Marty Clouser, senior VP of the company behind Sunday’s auction.. ‘Let the buyers decide their discount.’”
“Chowchilla almond farmer Noreen Fry was hoping for one of the lakefront homes with its own boat dock, but after one of her friends started bidding on it, she said she stepped aside.”
“And some of the houses didn’t sell, including the $470,000 home that was originally $734,000.”
The Recordnet. “The housing boom made construction one of San Joaquin County’s fastest-growing industries from 2002 to 2005, according to a 2006 California Employment Development Department report.”
“It’s a different story now. The residential building halt and mounting foreclosure crisis, the latter of which has displaced many San Joaquin County families, also have left a shortage of work for Marselo Martin and other laborers who once built and landscaped those homes.”
“Now homeless, he does side jobs - anything to send money to his family. ‘Today I work. Tomorrow I might not,’ said Martin.”
“The surge in day laborers soliciting at Stockton’s Gateway Plaza concerns property owners. As many as 100 men wait for work every day in front of the plaza’s Unocal 76 gas station, as police intermittently survey the area for loitering.”
“Increased competition among workers is also a problem for the laborers. For every employer that pulls up, five to 10 men rush to the vehicle, but only a few are chosen. By the end of the day, most are left behind.”
“Martin spends many nights sleeping under the downtown freeways when there’s no room in local shelters. ‘Right now, there’s no work here. It’s almost as bad as Mexico,’ he said.”
The Santa Cruz Sentinel. “A near record number of homeowners likely won’t pay property taxes by the April 10 deadline, another sign of just how tight things have become.”
“‘If you’re starting to have some debt problems and you don’t know if you’re going to make it, the first thing you do is stop paying the property taxes,’ said loan broker Jim Chubb in Soquel.”
“About 4.5 percent of property owners countywide, nearly one in 20, are expected to be in this situation come Thursday, the due date for the final installment of the 2007 property tax bill…according to projections by the county’s Assessor-Controller Office.”
“The projected rate of delinquency is up from 2.3 percent four years ago and is the highest since at least the mid-’90s, said Assessor-Controller Mary Jo Walker. ‘We have to be robust enough to withstand the shortage [of delinquent property taxes] for a couple years,’ Walker said. ‘We prefer this not to happen.’”
“Already, the county’s property tax roster, which normally accounts for more than 10 percent of total revenues, is showing stunted growth due to the slumping real estate market. Hundreds of homes have been reassessed at lower values, meaning less property tax coming in on those properties, a trend that’s expected to continue in the coming year.”
“The highest rates of tax delinquency are expected in Watsonville, where 10 percent are projected to miss the Thursday deadline, and the San Lorenzo Valley, where 7 percent are expected to be late.”
“County Tax Collector Fred Keeley says the high numbers are no surprise given the current housing crunch and the struggle for credit, a crisis evident in the rate of foreclosures.”
“This year, at least 130 county homes have been foreclosed — compared to 29 at this time in 2007.”
The Daily Press. “Foreclosed homes are becoming a breeding ground for criminals, according to Karen Hunt of the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department, Victorville station. The entire Victor Valley is plagued by this problem, not just Victorville.”
“‘Anytime you have property with nobody around, there’s a potential for vandalism,’ Hunt said. ‘Sometimes, even if neighbors notice strange people, they just assume they must be the new owners.’”
“Another area of real estate affected can be new homes being built, Hunt said. ‘We encourage builders to have security on site,’ she said.”
“The San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors is expected to direct the Sheriff’s Department to come back with a report on May 14, said David Zook, spokesman for San Bernardino County 1st District Supervisor Brad Mitzelfelt.”
“‘The primary intent of the item is the public safety aspect, which is to ensure we’re doing all we can to prevent criminal activities in vacant homes,’ Zook said. ‘The other key aspect of that is metal theft, because we know how prevalent metal theft is in our county.’”
“‘They go in and get the stoves and get whatever they can get,’ said Jack Fales of Ambassador Realty. ‘We see it a lot.’”
The Press Enterprise. “Marla Berry is one of 305 teachers who received preliminary layoff notices from the Rialto Unified School District. She is one of 14,000 teachers statewide who have been notified that they might not have jobs next school year.”
“Karl Stuck, president of the Lake Elsinore Teacher’s Association, said 32 teachers with temporary contracts have been notified that those contracts may not be renewed.”
“‘Quite a few people have no clue how they’re going to make their mortgage payments after June 30,’ he said. ‘The housing crisis is causing the budget crisis and the budget crisis is causing districts to lay people off, which further exacerbates the housing crisis. It’s a self-feeding cycle.’”
“Jacob Milchman, a fifth-grade teacher at Record Elementary School, and his wife, Amy, a fifth-grade teacher at San Jacinto Elementary, were two of 50 teachers in the San Jacinto Unified School District to be notified that they could be losing their jobs through budget cuts.”
“In November, the Milchmans bought a three-bedroom home in Winchester. They need both of their salaries to make the payments. Compounding their worries, they are expecting their first child on June 2.”
“Willard Hughes, a teacher at San Gorgonio High School in San Bernardino, said he has been through layoffs in other jobs. But that was before he was 29 years old, married and the father of four, he said.”
“‘It’s more nerve-wracking now,’ he said.”
“The California native, a first-year teacher with the San Bernardino City Unified School District, moved back from Montana to take a job in the Cadet Corps program. He still has his Montana license plates and continues to pay the $125 a month rent on a three-bedroom apartment the family lived in there.”
“He planned to buy the Redlands home he is renting but learned in January that his contract would likely not be renewed next year.”
The Daily Pilot. “Someone in the real estate community wants to help Melissa Barnes sell a home, and it’s not a friend, a family member or even a colleague. In fact, it’s a competitor.”
“Barnes, a Realtor in Newport Beach, recently got a boost from Surterre Properties, another Newport Beach firm. A month ago, Surterre began sending out an e-mail list of Best Buys — homes that are a bargain due to their price, location or other factors — and one of Barnes’ properties in Newport Heights got picked for the latest mailing.”
“‘What I think it shows is that agents are grouping together, no matter what company they belong to, in order to facilitate sales,’ Barnes said. ‘That’s what we all need.’”
“‘The media per se likes to sell newspapers, and they like to dwell on the negative rather than the positive,’ said Realtor Spyro Kemble, who conceived the project. ‘Across the U.S., we have a subprime mortgage mess, but you don’t have that as much in the Newport Beach area.’”
“One of the firm’s goals, agent Michelle Brown said, is to encourage people to look for deals now rather than wait for home prices to plummet further.”
“‘Everyone’s waiting for that perfect day, but the problem with that is, you never know when the glass is empty,’ she said.”
The Pasadena Star News. “According to the staff at the family-owned West Covina Pawn, every day has been exceptionally busy since the economy started to tank. A constant stream of customers crowded the store last week, hoping to get cash for their valuables, including jewelry and antique gold coins. Most said they needed the money to pay bills.”
“‘The out-flowing money on loans has been exceptional,’ said Clint Toth, owner of Arts Jewelry and Loan in Whittier. ‘(We’ve seen) a lot of real estate agents, a lot of middle-class people.’”
“Pawnshop owners said they often see the effects of a distressed economy before anyone else. When people reach the end of their ropes, they start taking out loans against their personal possessions or just selling it outright.”
“Pawnshop owners like Monrovia Mayor Rob Hammond are noticing the return of a regular harbinger of bad economic times - more white-collar workers in their stores.”
“‘We’ve been seeing more white-collar workers in the past six months,’ Hammond said. ‘There are two major reasons I’m hearing right now - one is the high cost of gas … and we’re hearing from more and more people that their hours were cut or their jobs were eliminated.’”
“Pawnshops are always busy, Hammond added, but lately, they’re even busier.”
“Selling belongings or taking out loans using them as collateral is an indicator of crises happening in households, said Julie Albright, marriage and family therapist and sociology lecturer at USC.”
“‘It’s like a pressure cooker where the screws just keep tightening down and tightening down,’ she said.”
“Todd Robinson of Crown City Loan and Jewelry in Old Town Pasadena said he sees the middle class struggling first-hand. He said he’s getting at least a dozen brand-new customers a day.”
“‘They’re definitely coming from a different walk of life’ than his regulars, he said. ‘Poor people are still poor, but it’s the middle-class people that are just hanging on. They’re really starting to feel it.’”
“Experts said the economic downturn became notable toward the middle of last year with the sub-prime mortgage crisis, and other factors like manufacturing plant closures.”
“‘It’s a very complicated and scary situation, but I think we will be recovering by the end of the year,’ said Jack Kyser, chief economist for the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corp. ‘But I think it will be a little slower than anybody would like.’”
“Kyser said the sub-prime crisis has trickled down, impacting a broad range of people, including workers in the retail, auto, construction, mortgage and housing industries. One of the most alarming trends, he added, is the erosion of the middle class.”
“‘It’s very definitely a two-tier economy,’ Kyser said. ‘We’re losing our middle class and nobody knows what to do to save or stabilize it.’”
‘Kyser said the sub-prime crisis has trickled down, impacting a broad range of people, including workers in the retail, auto, construction, mortgage and housing industries. One of the most alarming trends, he added, is the erosion of the middle class.’
‘It’s very definitely a two-tier economy,’ Kyser said. ‘We’re losing our middle class and nobody knows what to do to save or stabilize it.’
I’ve got one mister center of the universe; how about developing an economy that isn’t built on selling each other houses with lousy loans? This guy is an economist?
Interesting how “specialists” seem to make these ‘discoveries’ like the erosion of the middle class when people like us have been mentioning this since 2003 or earlier. Just last week, one of the local blogs I read had some article about the Bay Area possibly losing it’s financial edge since many younger people were moving away while the population grew older. duh!- I mentioned that years ago.
The housing bubble has made me less inclined to really care what specialists and economists think. They’re simply mining common sense logic that anyone paying attention( like we on this forum) have known well forever. The scary part is that people like these so-called specialists are the ones usually talking in the ear of the Fed and government. I find it difficult to believe that everyone in the Government is only now starting to understand the unfolding debacle around them. Perhaps they’re simply playing stupid.
In other news- things are as usual in the Bay Area. I saw lots of couples eagerly looking at POS overpriced houses. The kool aid must be injected into the morning fog here.
Maybe these couples are not so eager, but just circling above like birds of prey waiting to swoop in when the time is right (like my wife and I)….patience my fine feathered friends…patience. You do have the overpriced POS houses right though!
“‘It’s a very complicated and scary situation, but I think we will be recovering by the end of the year,’ said Jack Kyser, chief economist for the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corp.”
Jack’s wishing. Sh!t in the other hand Jack, and see which one fills up first.
I looked at 3 open houses last week. Los Altos and Los Gatos. None were noteworthy. All are pending or sold. Sadly for me, these cannot be bought for my wishing price.
Los Altos 94022: Median price down 44.9% y-o-y
Los Gatos 95033: Median price down 32.6% y-o-y
Other zip codes in those cities are flat to positive, but it is only a matter of time.
Los Altos Median might be down 44.9%, but house values have not dropped 44.9%. This town has so far been holding up the house values. Two years from now they will drop 44.9%, but not yet.
Back to this thread,
‘We’re losing our middle class and nobody knows what to do to save or stabilize it.’
Not true,
What he sees is the culling of the stupid people who thought they would get rich investing in real estate. Rich or poor they are both stupid. The only difference is that the government will bail out the rich (Bear Sterns is an example)
Get a load of the drops from the high end market ….
Here are a couple declines to make note of….
http://www.zillow.com/Charts.htm?chartDuration=10years&zpid=19528788
04/20/2007: $2,600,000
02/09/2007: $2,331,791
04/14/2000: $4,500,000
http://www.zillow.com/Charts.htm?chartDuration=10years&zpid=19792353
01/31/2008: $1,330,000
04/10/2007: $1,844,550
02/01/2006: $2,300,000
http://www.zillow.com/Charts.htm?chartDuration=10years&zpid=19790282
02/22/2008: $1,600,000
10/25/2007: $1,900,000
06/03/2005: $3,000,000
These are cherry picked to show close to or greater than 50% declines on top places in the best of cities….
Big V, believe me, the houses in Los Altos that I saw last year for $1.4m are not selling for $770k now. If they were I would not be posting, I’d be busy moving in!
That’s 1998 pricing. Plus, I’ll bet that the housing stock has improved in the last 10 years due to remodeling and expansion, so the price should be higher even if there had been no inflation. Finally, on 4/1/1998, the Nasdaq 100 was 1228. Now it is 1860 (after roundtripping much higher). Still 50% higher than 10 years ago. Los Altos houses are funded in part by stock, and it’s higher than it was 10 years ago.
Now, based on this, maybe the median shouldn’t be 2x 1998, should only be 50% higher. But that’s still $1.155m. And we are not there either.
SiO2:
Well, those are the stats. It’s simply true. As for for the rest of it, I’m not so convinced that house prices in Los Altos are based on the stock market. I have a feeling they’re based on exotic lending, just like everywhere else.
Big V, that is mostly caused by too little sales and a few lower priced homes sold that skewed the stat.
If you have little volume on a stock on the stock exchange, nobody can say “that skewed the stat” and the price would not be valid for all shares.
the stock market example is a red herring, since all shares of a particular class of security for a particular underlying are all identical.
that is not true of all houses in a given city or zipcode.
fwiw.
Los Altos / Los Altos Hills peaked and tanked hard during the dotcom boom/bust 1999-2002 but have been on a steady upward tear since 2004. People buy into this area as a terminus, there is no better place to live for us worker bees, this is Park Place and Boardwalk area.
Prop 13 allows anyone who’s bought 1850-1998 to rent out at a healthy profit. No-growth zoning control means the supply isn’t going to get any larger.
ThomasPS’s listings above are not from the PA -> LAH iron triangle, and their odd recent sales activity indicates flipper flops, not the kind of buyers on the west side.
Here’s a property in Los Altos that I chose at random. Seems about right.
One can claim every thing has it’s own market, as long buyers do not compare quantity, quality and price.
Thanks for the links ThomasPS.
The one on La Vida Real is noteworthy. I did hear that the 2.5+ properties in Los Altos were soft.
Three Springs Ct is Alum Rock Hills. Perhaps a nice house but the schools very different. So is Valley Ridge Lane. For sure East SJ has declined, I don’t dispute that.
Is there a way to use Zillow to show properties sold twice in recent years? Or did you pick through recent sales looking for two sales?
I live in Los Altos. Housing prices are holding firm.
How long will it last? Who knows.
Mike
Strange, I just read an article about the wealthiest 1% of the country owning 20% of assets. Seems to me like we all should know by now who destroyed the middle class.
Follow the money.
Oops, no time for that. Got to watch the latest pimp this house episode. Where do these people get all this money?
‘We’re losing our middle class and nobody knows what to do to save or stabilize it’
Wrong. Plenty of people know exactly what to do.
Jack Kyser, chief economist for the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corp.
“‘It’s very definitely a two-tier economy,’ Kyser said. ‘We’re losing our middle class and nobody knows what to do to save or stabilize it.’” “but I think we will be recovering by the end of the year”
Losing middle class but a recovery by the end of the year?
“”Masters of the Universe”"…”"This guy is an economist?”"
NO.
This will get uh…er…promise the world, yeah.
Like, who owns the World?
Da Masters may find themselves in a very…er…upside down situation.
Got pitchfork, rope and slapping horses?
Yep,
Leigh
‘We’re losing our middle class and nobody knows what to do to save or stabilize it.’
People know what to do, but our gov has decided to destroy the middle class. Those who have told us that opening our markets would enrich us all have forgotten or more likely ignored one important point. The world can not consume as Americans. There just aren’t enough resources. Eventually resources become the limiting factor, enriching owners of natural resources(and those controlling the government), and hurting the middle class who grovel for fewer and fewer manufacturing jobs.
‘We’re losing our middle class and nobody knows what to do to save or stabilize it.’
Mr. Bear has a response:
“One of the most alarming trends”
Mr aladinsane has a response:
‘It’s very definitely a two-tier economy,’
Ms txchic has a response:
“‘Everyone’s waiting for that perfect day, but the problem with that is, you never know when the glass is empty,’ she said.”
Leave it to a realtor to spew incoherent mixed metaphors.
The glass is empty when you are able to see at least one or two examples of someone who has had it poured out onto their head and not taken a bath.
I only see debt people taking a bath from a glass that is well more than half full of bubbly.
I see debt people………………………..boooooh!
“Don’t count your chickens before the horse.”
Neil, I’m a little concerned that a couple of your posts lately have not contained the signature “got popcorn?”; which makes me wonder if the show’s already begun and we should be seated with our popcorn now.
Yep.
Seriously, this feature is underway. There are still a few ’safe seats’ left, but not many. More than a few are going to find out the remaining seats are JT’s.
Got Popcorn?
Neil
I’m seated comfortably and waiting for the main feature. I think we’re just seeing the previews right now. My wife and I were originally looking to buy this year if possible (my handle here used to be cayo_ron (Rum Cay from Miami Vice) but looks like we’ll be waiting till 09 now. Meanwhile, we’re stocking up on the Orville Redenbachers.
I’m fully lounging until 2010. This is a long show.
Right now its doing the cartoons. Hey, its another episode of that goofy rabbit in “I won’t give the house away!”
Got Popcorn?
Neil
So with the ’season’ upon us, we are all well stocked with popcorn, hot dogs and beer….what inning is it and what’s the score anyway?
Goofy rabbit? I think the correct term is “wascally wabbit.”
Taste like chicken
Hi Suzy:
I believe Neil is stocked with merlot. Myself, I just went wine shopping (at Safeway, though, not real wine shopping). Merlot, cabernet, and chianti. What goes best with rabbit?
Why a lovely viognier would be great with that rabbit Big V
“You can lead a horse to water, but a pencil must be lead.”
- Stan Laurel
*Snort*
Leigh
How about when you flip it and no juice flows?
She’s one brick short of the whole nine yards.
She’s a taco short of a bird in the hand!
You can drink an ugly girl pretty, but you can’t drink a fat girl thin. hehehehehehehe
I liked the quote from the teacher too. Hope he’s not an English teacher.
‘We’re both teachers and we don’t really have a lot of cash, so we have to be really very discriminate in the way we use it,’ said Hermosa.”
you caught that too….
option B: He teaches economics.
“Michael says he’s confident he and his wife have made a smart investment. ‘The price is right and I think it’s an up-and-coming market so I’m taking a little risk but I think it’s a good one for our future,’ said Michael.”
There is nothing up and coming in Chowchilla, California. It is a long way from anywhere, built on ag, and run by the sons and daughters of Depression-era Okies and Arkies. It is an ok place to live if a small town life is what you want. But I can not envision the word “investment” associated with Chowchilla.
For those of us of a certain age, Chowchilla will always be remembered as the scene of one of the most bizarre kidnappings in American history. Some details:
http://www.crimelibrary.com/gangsters_outlaws/outlaws/chowchilla_kidnap/
I know a building inspector that went to high school with the kidnappers. If I remember the story correctly they were two brothers who came from an upper middle class family (Portola Valley, CA I think).
Mike
“Willard Hughes, a teacher at San Gorgonio High School in San Bernardino, said he has been through layoffs in other jobs. But that was before he was 29 years old, married and the father of four, he said.”
I thought teachers were supposed to be smart. Four kids on a teacher’s salary? 29 years old and he’s already ruined his life.
“The California native, a first-year teacher with the San Bernardino City Unified School District, moved back from Montana to take a job in the Cadet Corps program. He still has his Montana license plates and continues to pay the $125 a month rent on a three-bedroom apartment the family lived in there.”
When I first read that he was only 29 with 4 kids, I thought “This is a guy who acts before he thinks”. But now that I see what kind of rent he was paying in Montana (even though the kids were really packed in), I’m like “Oh”. With a cost of living like that, a person can almost afford to be Mormon.
How many layoffs could you have been through by age 29?? Can’t be many methinks.
Oh I don’t know about that. I read on another site about this person who was 28 and had gone thru 51 jobs. Don’t know what his field was, maybe IT?
Oh c’mon. “Ruined his life”? That is a bit much. He got laid off. There are other teaching jobs out there. He was laid off. He was not sent to prison for the rest of his life.
Four kids? He ruined his sleep patterns, yes. Life? No.
Does anyone here know what the process is at the Tri-City Animal Shelter for getting landlord permission to let renters adopt pets? I went down there to get a cat, but they said I had to have permission from my landlord! I was thinking I could just come down there with a copy of my lease (which allows 2 cats), but I’m afraid they’ll actually call the landlord and find out that I already have 2 cats. It’s totally stupid for them to turn people away when they have so many cats on the chopping block right now.
cats on the chopping block…
a snappy visual of the coming economic fun..
There used to be a strip mall in Costa Mesa that had about 10 businesses, and as it would happen, 2 of the signs in the stack had “Cat Clinic”, and directly below that, “Sushi”. Needless to say, I never ate sushi there.
In Pacific Beach, CA there is a Vietnamese restaurant right next door to a vet and grooming business… My good friend I play poker with said he used to eat cats in Vietnam, said they taste like chicken.
V - just go and get a friend to get them for you. What are they going to do: Foreclose on the cats?
For the hate cash/love gold folks that hang around here:
“According to the staff at the family-owned west Covina Pawn, every day has been exceptionally busy since the economy started to tank. A constant stream of customers crowded the store last week, hoping to get cash for their valuables, including jewelry and antique gold coins. Most said they need the money to pay bils.”
$300 ipod
$300 spot in gold coin
Which item gets better pawn value?
The cheap 14K ghetto bling doesn’t really count. Copper and platinum thievery is still going strong, btw.
I wonder how the pawn shops make it financially. How are they able to sell the stuff they take in? On Ebay? Or do people normally shop there looking for bargains?
I’ve never been in a pawn shop, maybe I should take a look sometime.
Pawn shops only loan people a fraction of what the item is actually worth. If the debtor doesn’t repay the lown, the pawn broker sells the collateral at market price. You can find good stuff at a pawn shop, but it won’t be less than market price. If you want to sell your own stuff, you’d probably do better putting it on consignment somewhere.
I just looked at one on-line, they have no bargains I can see. A Rolex for $6500 used ? Gimme a break.
There’s a pawn shop near my office. They also do jewelry repair. They do a great job, and for a reasonable price. I lost a side stone in my engagement ring, and they replaced it for me for less than half of what a mall jeweler quoted. According to the owner, some of the pawned items they end up with need repairs, and they do them inhouse before the items are sold. The name of the shop? The Happy Hocker!
First off, its not a love/hate thing. Cash has been disrespected by our government for years, and a few of us have wised up to that fact (by studying history - try it some time) and sought the safety of metals. There will come a time when gold will lose its shine as a hedge against inflation. The fools that fell in love will face a cruel divorce, and most of them will be the last ones in. That time has not yet come.
If youre claiming that a few people pawning off their rings to raise cash is going to change the historic imbalances in our economy, you’re dreaming. You think these chumps have stockpiled gold and silver and are unloading to honor their debt obligations? That’s an absurd idea and should easily be recognized as such by anyone with a grasp of logic and basic economics.
“Willard Hughes, a teacher at San Gorgonio High School in San Bernardino, said he has been through layoffs in other jobs. But that was before he was 29 years old, married and the father of four, he said.”
ahhh yes.. the whole education crisis. I honestly feel sorry for these people. Teachers are in my opinion the most important citizens in our society. They are grossly underpaid and for some reason one of the first to get cut during recessions. The irony is that in many California cities, a community near a decent public school demands higher prices for the homes surrounding it. Yet now we have a education crisis. Only now are parents in areas like these ( mine included) starting to at least admit that part of this problem might just be tied to high home prices and the subsequent housing crash. Of course they won’t outright say that the prices are too high, but now that they themselves are being affected by the outcome, the problem is now presenting itself point-blank.
My advice to teachers in California is to teach in another state. My mom has taught for 35 years in TN and does just fine.
I don’t feel sorry for any of these idiots who teach our children in the IE. My wife works for the SB County and at their last meeting between them and the teachers of Rialto; the SB County tried to get the teachers to forgo a 5% increase in salary. They said if they go without the salary bump this year; will have enough money in the budget for all that were currently employed. They choose to take the bump and let some of their fellow teachers get laid off. Do I feel sorry, NOT a chance! I have a few teachers in my family and their all idiots!
BTW….Rialto teachers are the highest paid in the state.
They must not be English teachers……
Good one dustartist… LOL
They can all get up and leave california as far as I am concerned. Underpaid? Are you kidding? I have friends that are teachers getting 65000 a year entry level. Just because they have a masters degree.
Masters in communications = biggest joke ever!
Please tell me where. My daughter and SIL make only about 2 thirds that here in the desert. One public, one private. Private teacher makes much less even though it’s a very expensive school.
San Bernardino = I think 53K starting
The downey school district
The best paying one I know is sunny hills in fullerton though they get much higher pay then anyone.
Good luck for your daughter
ATCrazy!
Seriously ~ an honorable profession.
I can not imagine (public schools) the horror! Naughty small ones without guidance.
Prayers,
Leigh
P.S. Thank heavens for grams (you).
P.S.S…
Thank heavens for Grams like you.
Best Always,
Leigh
Please tell me where. My daughter and SIL make only about 2 thirds that here in the desert. One public, one private. Private teacher makes much less even though it’s a very expensive school. On the other hand - classes are smaller, facilities are much better, kids are much better behaved and 100% english speaking at the private school.
“their all idiots.” LOL!
Oooo 65K a year for an MBA. I bet it cost more than that to get it. Geez 65K ain’t much for a MBA. I’m think’in the private sector pays more for a masters
A master’s degree doesn’t have to be an MBA. An MBA is a master’s in business administration. That pays about $60k to start at most CA companies.
yeah, yeah I know MSW, etc, etc…..
I’m callling BS on that one. I do not believe that any school district in CA pays that much for a entry level teaching position.
My husband works for SDUSD. He has a BA and a Masters with 90 units which puts him at the top of step nine on the pay scale. His pay is $60k.
One of the teachers my husband used to work with has his Doctorate and he doesn’t get paid any more than a teacher with a Masters plus 90 does.
Philadelphia, PA pays roughly $42,000 to start for a Masters. Top salary possible for a teacher (base pay, not including coaching football, teaching summer school, etc) is $80,000. That is 10 years experience, 2 certifications a Masters Degree PLUS 60 credits.
Even in the pricey blue blood suburbs of Philly pay way less than $65K to start. I second the BS.
–
“‘They’re definitely coming from a different walk of life’ than his regulars, he said. ‘Poor people are still poor, but it’s the middle-class people that are just hanging on. They’re really starting to feel it.’”
…
“Kyser said the sub-prime crisis has trickled down, impacting a broad range of people, including workers in the retail, auto, construction, mortgage and housing industries. One of the most alarming trends, he added, is the erosion of the middle class.”
“‘It’s very definitely a two-tier economy,’ Kyser said. ‘We’re losing our middle class and nobody knows what to do to save or stabilize it.’”
Time to do anything is long past. The un-stated plan of Bankrupters and Fraudsters of New York City to force 30,000,000 households from middle-class to poverty is now in the process of materializing. The USG and the Fed were complicit in this plan because both facilitated pushing of the mortgage debt, the primarily weapon in realization of the plan. It wasn’t hard to see what was going on and what will happen.
“Experts said the economic downturn became notable toward the middle of last year with the sub-prime mortgage crisis, and other factors like manufacturing plant closures.”
“‘It’s a very complicated and scary situation, but I think we will be recovering by the end of the year,’ said Jack Kyser, chief economist for the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corp. ‘But I think it will be a little slower than anybody would like.’”
Recession is CA began during Jun-Jul of last year based on the employment data.
Jas
I think we will start to see a silver lining by 2010. By then, we will have Democrats running Congress, the White House, and the Federal Reserve. That will turn things around for the middle class. Upperclassmen: please bend over.
Thats funny.
So those 30 dollar bottles of wine make you middle class? I know that I am middle class because I sure as hell cant afford that.
Nobody thinks that they are rich, everybody thinks they are middle class. (unless they are actually poor) Because everybody knows someone richer.
This is not a slam on anyone in particular, just an observation based on rich people that I know. Of course I am middle class, my friend who lives in Los Altos Hills is rich
I think upper class is the top 20% of income earners in a particular area. I don’t qualify for that. I think I’m considered upper middle class.
I’m going to walk around with an upper-class mindset just because I failed to qualify for the Stimulus check.
HAR!
We pay taxes on our taxes…
er…
Wait,
That would make us…
How do you say?
Low class?
Leigh
P.S. True
No offense, but is it just me or does anyone else have no clue about anything Leigh posts?
The Dems are already running Congress, Big V. Haven’t you heard some of them sorryass ideas coming out of there lately?? Anyone who thinks there’ll be a change when there’s a Dem in the White House is in for a shock.
Dr. Zhivago, American style?
Agree 100% dude. The gangsters destroyed the middle class. I always wanted to visit Peru but now I can see a 3rd world country from the convenience of my own back yard.
Got ammo?
–
“The gangsters destroyed the middle class.”
Gangsters is a good description of BFNYC. Occasionally, I use the term “Gangs Of New York,” a movie title. These are financial gangsters. Believe it or not, leading baks use criminal gangs (goondas) in India to collect debt from consumers. I was told this by a mid-level manager who works for ICICI, a leading bank in India, in a matter of fact way. Later my well-connected financier brother in India told me that Citi Bank and the rest all hire a gang of goondas as a threat to those who can’t repay the debt. One of my poorer relative committed suicide rather than to face these goondas. The global empire of Citi Group is out of control.
Jas
Wink
Jas,
I wonder about this. The Argentines amongst whom I live (Other posters who live in other Central or South American countries may have different reports to share.) have experienced some extreme financial pressures and upheaval but still consider themselves to have or be a part of the middle class. Yes, they work multiple jobs to make ends meet. Yes, their life styles are not what they used to be, but they reject the notion that they no longer are, or have, a middle class. And, in the economic spectrum, they are in the middle of the economic have and have nots. Does middle class mean a certain standard of living, or is it that the middle is revised downward? Can you go from being middle class to non-middle class if your mind does not let you go there? Can the thresholds of what define a middle class be redefined and the populace accept that definition?
“Selling belongings or taking out loans using them as collateral is an indicator of crises happening in households, said Julie Albright, marriage and family therapist and sociology lecturer at USC.”
“‘It’s like a pressure cooker where the screws just keep tightening down and tightening down,’ she said.”
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
I don’t think that is how a pressure cooker works. Maybe she was thinking of a vise? What about thumbscrews? As for selling belongings, that doesn’t sound so much as a crisis, but more a sense of reality finally getting through their thick skulls. Taking care of necessities and hunkering down in survival mode sounds perfectly reasonable to me.
“As for selling belongings, that doesn’t sound so much as a crisis, but more a sense of reality finally getting trough their thick skulls.”
Selling belongings works as long as you have belongings to sell and a market to sell them into.
Debunking the alarmist bleatings of the Pigs in local government…
********
April 7, 2008
How Big is 41,231?
“This sounds like reporting to please your constituency…
The ‘problem’ is taxes aren’t growing as fast as in past years. If we’re lucky, this will quickly expose how state and local governments continue to spend not only every nickel coming in but also most nickels that are assumed to arrive in the future.”
http://www.viewfromsiliconvalley.com/id405.html
“And some of the houses didn’t sell, including the $470,000 home that was originally $734,000.”
Let me be the first to sway, then its not a $470,000 home!
Got Popcorn?
Neil
132
142
228
204
203
309
Sep ‘07 - Mar ‘08 NOD for Palmdale 93552. We’re bottoming out all over the place!
peanuts…they haven’t even warmed up yet…
“…Lisa Magee jumped up and down, squealing, after her father-in-law bought the home for $320,000. (Its original price was $484,000.)”
“‘Oh, I’m shaking,’ she said afterward.”
I wonder what she’ll be saying next year when they can’t sell the home for $250,000….
She’ll be doing a very different kind of squealing next year if her signature was anywhere on the contract.
You got such a purty mouth……..Cue Banjos
If you ever get the chance, take a rafting trip on the Chattooga River, where the movie “Deliverance” was filmed. You’ll swear there are eyes in the thick, dark forest, checking out your “purty mouth.”
When you get back to the outfitter store, you can buy a T-shirt that says, “Paddle faster, I hear banjos.”
As usual in California, Daddy pays for kids’ house. Maybe I’m just bitter because I don’t have a rich–or stupid–Daddy.
Of course, it means another Boomer who will eventually lose all his retirement savings as it is misdirected to housing…requiring massive bailouts of Boomers in the years ahead so they can maintain their high standard of living.
Anthony,
There will not be a massive bailout of us Boobers. We’re gonna get what’s commin’ to us. Some of us get that, though I would wager that The Archies–my personal favorite–and the Monkeys–also a popular band that I liked during my days as a young person–rank up there with us oldie, serial YouTube viewers. Those of us who are fiscally responsible and are NOT ostrich look-a-likes, won’t be draining the coffers of our young people. (I’m not in txchix’s tax braket, but I do better ‘en most.) Your problem is going to be crowd control….deal with us all rioting in the streets in our electronic SCOOTER chairs!
Sorry, this is way off topic, but I have to say it anyways… I was looking through the HBB photos and saw a pic of a party with a few HBB people…
OMG!!! Big V, you are one very hot-looking girl… If I wasn’t already taken, I would be busting a move on you…
Sorry… I just had to get that off my chest…
and now back to your regular programming…
I only saw one photo, of a realtor’s sign rotting on the lawn. Where are the other photos? I’d love to see what some of the regular posters look like.
“Where are the other photos?”
Move your mouse pointer to the right or left side of the photos and an arrow will appear, click on the the arrow to go to the next picture.
Run your mouse over the photo, it has arrows embedded.
Ditto.
If I wasn’t already taken, I would be busting a move on you…
Well there you have it Big V. The good ones are always taken.
Really, you thought I looked hot? I thought I looked like I was flashing a gang sign. The Big V gang. It was supposed to be a peace sign.
Hot, beautiful AND sexy!!!
Who needs match.com when you have HBB?!
Down Boy, Down !
Haha! Maybe somebody can convince Ben to start a new blog!
Didn’t look like a gang sign to me. As soon as I saw the picture, I thought to myself, “Look, Big V is flashing a peace sign!”
I’m not taken………can I have her???
Well if you’re not taken, you’re not a good one. See how that works? Same with jobs and borrowing from a bank.
Sure I’ll introduce you.
Egad, there it is, right there in the HBB photo gallery…now I’ll be ready if I’m walking through an airport and some Gen X/Yer shouts “Hey A Z Lender I need a loan!” I have to tell you though, REHobbyist has a more reliable income source (even if it involves actual work).
I think big-v looks like jan brady
Michael and Hermosa Dopheide landed their 4-bedroom home. It was previously priced at $319,000 but they bought it for a flat $200,000. … Michael says he’s confident he and his wife have made a smart investment. ‘The price is right and I think it’s an up-and-coming market so I’m taking a little risk but I think it’s a good one for our future,’ said Michael.”
I don’t know if this is a good risk or not, what struck me here is just how often lately the price declines in these articles have been huge, waaaay more than a couple grand and some granite countertop and/or other craptastic builder incentives.
A hundred thousand bucks plus ?! That’s a lot of money.
…but you have to remember where they’re buying and how much prices ran up too! $200,000 for a house in the middle of nowhere is not that good a deal… just my 2 cents…
Just wait until this recession gets into high gear. You’ll know things are bad when they remake “Good Times”.
Dy-No-Mite!
“Martin spends many nights sleeping under the downtown freeways when there’s no room in local shelters. ‘Right now, there’s no work here. It’s almost as bad as Mexico,’ he said.””
. . . almost as bad as Mexico. Thats the key phrase. I’ve said for a long time that most immigrants will not voluntarily go back to South of the Border. There is nothing to go back TO ! For these people, the worst day in the U.S. better than the best day in whatever 3rd world corrupt hellhole they escaped. It’s just that simple.
(on a side note, why oh why did so many immigrants have to breed such large effin families? I know they are catholics n all but any family in poverty over 3 or 4 is just irresponsible. No, not immigrant bashing, just making a realistic observation. I’m sick of all the sob stories from citizens & aliens alike about how tough they have it. TAKE SOME RESPONSIBILITY or STARVE!!. that’s my rant, plain n simple. And yes, I have given often & freely to truly desperate peope, like the mentally ill & handicapped, so save the flaming)
say could you spare a couple bucks? i just need a little gas money to get back to Barstow…
Martin spends
Ben’s at the names again!
Got Popcorn?
Neil
Hey if more americans had large families we wouldn’t need to bring them here, shut your piehole.
I hear ya.
Just read an article today about how having at least 3 children is the new status symbol in NYC. It’s not just immigrants having litters - it’s everywhere. It’s part of the go back to the perfect days of the 50s schtick. Then during the days of change, and after earthday and ecology came into the public realm, zero population growth suggested no more than reproducing yourself. Then the poor started spewing out big familes and once they were villianized, it became cool for women to go home, get barefoot (between boob jobs and botox) and have those babies. Seems like it was all part of that family values thing, too. Maybe the next few years of bad times financially, will bring people back to some sanity about the huge and longterm commitment children are and about thinking through adding another human to your family and the earth. Rant definitely off now.
As a person living in Argentina (Latin countries have some strong similarities, such as extremes between poverty and wealth, large families, frequent social unrest, etc., so I think my viewpoint is applicable here.), I can say that many of the poor can’t be “responsible” because they are still children who are unable to develop into adults. IMO, they are kept there through their own thinking and by their feudal landlords who want to keep an ample supply of cheap labor. A good number of Argentines that I’ve met who are not part of the upper echelon are so socialized that they have relinquished much personal responsibility. I’m not trying to defend it, but I am reporting firsthand that the affects of this socialism have created an underclass that can’t seem to break out of its chains no matter what it does. And the situation continues to deteriorate. I find it very sad that the Chicago projects on the south side look good compared to some of the slums from which many of the immigrants down here come. Also, the USA is not getting the “cream of the immigration crop” in many cases because peoples who are doing okay in their own country don’t need to go someplace else to better themselves. And, most Latin peoples do not want to leave their families. Families are very important here; I wish the US as a population had the same devotion to families that it once did.
Having a large family in Argentina qualifies you for more government aid (sound familiar?). The government will give you a house in some nice slum (The one in the closest town to where we live is called “the dump”.) and a pittance on which to live. In addition, if you work as a laborer, then the more children you have the more you can make during harvest, especially if the land owner will pay you off the books. (The catch to this is that if you don’t pay a worker on the books, he/she can go to a government-provided lawyer and sue you for labor claims. The flipside is the wealthy land owner’s son who knows a good thug or two to straighten out the dispute.) It’s damn hard work and lousy pay. We see grandparents, parents, and children all picking as a crew. They pool their money together just to get enough to eat each day. The peoples of Peru and Bolivia come here to harvest as well (they also work in the brick-making factories because the Argentines won’t do that work, or so the government reports), and the Argentines hate them because they will work for less money and claim government benefits when they can (sound familiar?). To put this in perspective via an example, a plum picker will make about $3-4 pesos per crate of plums. Each crate can hold about 26 pounds and take at least an hour of two persons’ time to pick. A kilo (approximately 2.2 pounds) of chicken is $15 pesos. A litro of diesel is $2.30 pesos (almost $7 USD per gallon). An old Ford 150 from 1970 is $10,000 pesos. To a person from the USA with a 3:1 dollar/peso exchange rate, life is good. To the average Argentine, it sucks, which is why they think north americanis sh$t money and look to take it whenever they can via the NAT (north americanis tax) or a scam because north americanis are all stupido. I’m not kidding, the proprietors here don’t put the prices on their goods so that they can charge one price to the locals and another to the non-locals. (Non-locals are generally referred to as “expats”, but I reject that term because I am not an ex-patriot. I love my country.)
It’s easy to be [pick an adjective…angry/unsettled/scared] over what is going on around us or happening to us, and there is much about which to be [pick the same adjective, or a different one if you like], or to ridicule those who make choices we view as stupid, but in the end all we have are each other… no matter what our nationality or our current phase in life. Todd Harrison over at Minyanville.com made the comment that his best friend put his chips next to his. This resonated with me, and caused me to look at where I am putting my chips. For those who care, this is an important distinction.
“Expat” is short for “expatriate,” not “ex-patriot.”
“Expatriate” means someone who lives abroad, not someone who is no longer a patriot.
I undestand the term is expatriate. According to the New Heritage Dictionary, the term’s meaning includes “one who has renounced one’s native land”. I think that falls under “patriotism”.
Okay, but that is the #2 definition in that dictionary (if I’m looking at the same dictionary, which I think I am). The #1 definition is “One who has taken up residence in a foreign country.”
If you don’t want to be called an expat, that’s up to you, but I think the word is much more commonly used in sense #1.
“One of the firm’s goals, agent Michelle Brown said, is to encourage people to look for deals now rather than wait for home prices to plummet further.”
“‘Everyone’s waiting for that perfect day, but the problem with that is, you never know when the glass is empty,’ she said.”
Lady, this is too easy. If you turn over the glass, and nothing runs out of it, THEN it is empty. Now the Realtors are starting to sound like used car salesmen at a crappy used car lot.
Ben - Big Fan!! This is my first post on HBB. I’ve been reading this site for a couple years, and have been a “Housing Bear” since 2002. This article was too much for me to not respond.
Now is not the right time to buy………
It’s always the right time to buy…….
…..if you’re a Realtard…. oops, sorry, I mean Realtor!
Yes, but 2002 was. Go figure.
Marty Clouser, senior VP of the company behind Sunday’s auction.. ‘Let the buyers decide their discount.’”
As long as there’s a few shills mixed in (wink wink)
You know things are bad when the illegal Mexicans start leaving. More upside from the bursting of the bubble. Before you go, please take your kids with you!
OT - More appropriate for the AZ stories (about Maricopa) but wanted to add it here as a preview.
Ben: If you haven’t run this yet, please consider for your upcoming AZ topic.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/06/realestate/keymagazine/406ariz-t.html?pagewanted=1&_r=2&hp
Excerpt from the New York Times article:
I rented a house in Rancho El Dorado for my weeklong stay in Maricopa. I figured it would be a good way to meet people. The house I rented was for sale, but because the owners didn’t anticipate hearing from potential buyers anytime soon, they had put it on the rental market as well. It was a four-bedroom house, located on the golf course at the end of a cul-de-sac. It had a dishwasher, a three-car garage, an office and a laundry room, all for about half the rent of my one-bedroom third-floor walk-up with crooked floors in Brooklyn.
Although it was exciting to experience features you don’t often see in New York apartments, like the “great room” and the “media room,” it was kind of spooky being in a giant house with no furniture. Once the sun went down, the street was very dark and very quiet; the blank faces of empty houses were only occasionally lit by garage lights. There was nowhere to go and no one on the street. The brick walls on both sides of my house meant I couldn’t see my neighbors and they couldn’t see me. So I began to spend my evenings at Fry’s, the supermarket in the main strip mall on Highway 347. Fry’s had couches and wireless Internet and a flat-screen TV — and, more important, people. As it turned out, I was not the only person in Maricopa who thought Fry’s was a pretty great place to spend an evening.
At Fry’s, I met Adrianna Roberts, who is 16 and recently moved to Maricopa from Illinois. Her parents had wanted to get out of a bad neighborhood and into a bigger house, and her older sister, a real estate agent, had recommended Maricopa. Roberts and her friend Alajeda Howard, a recent transplant from Missouri, bagged groceries at the store, and they came to Fry’s even when they weren’t scheduled to work, because, they said, there was nothing else to do.
Roberts and Howard, who is also 16, live in Palo Brea, one of the least inhabited subdivisions in town. The roads in Palo Brea were each marked with a green street sign and a curb, and the lots had been wired for electricity and water, but they were mostly empty; just a few streets had homes on them. Roberts and Howard told me they missed their old neighborhoods. “Here you have to have someone drive you 45 minutes just to do something on the weekend, and everyone falls asleep on the way there,” Howard said, fiddling with a package of cheese she was supposed to return to the dairy cooler. Roberts concurred: “In Illinois, you could get home and walk anywhere you wanted to go — to the corner store or up the street to the YMCA. The mall was two blocks away.”
Shawn Bellamy, a 19-year-old store manager, came by to offer his two cents about Maricopa. “The only thing good is Fry’s. Without Fry’s, I wouldn’t have met anyone here. It’s just slit-your-throat-and-wrists boring.”
————————————————
From reading the whole article, Maricopa is not a happy place to be at this time.
BayQT~
He still has his Montana license plates and continues to pay the $125 a month rent on a three-bedroom apartment the family lived in there.
Wow, why would someone buy a house in rust belt Pennsylvania when they could rent for $125/month in Montana?
$125/mo in Montana is not going to be in a nice location. Think Dakotas or adjacent to toxic mine tailings.
Thats OK, Silicon Valley (Sunnyvale&Santa Clara) which were the sites for Semiconductor production for decades has toxic ground water contamination. Many residence are getting cancer… go right ahead and google it.
Rents 1600-2000/mo. the cancer tumors for free…
“‘The media per se likes to sell newspapers, and they like to dwell on the negative rather than the positive,’ said Realtor Spyro Kemble, who conceived the project. ‘Across the U.S., we have a subprime mortgage mess, but you don’t have that as much in the Newport Beach area.’”
It’s different here!!!
“One of the firm’s goals, agent Michelle Brown said, is to encourage people to look for deals now rather than wait for home prices to plummet further.”
**because we need a commission today, not tomorrow!!
“‘What I think it shows is that agents are grouping together, no matter what company they belong to, in order to facilitate sales,’ Barnes said. ‘That’s what we all need.’”
Pfffftttt…bwwwaaahhhaaa…stick a fork in it…it’s over if it has come to that kind of rationalization
From the O.C. Register. I kinda doubt that the location is a coincidence.
A woman is believed to have committed suicide by jumping off of a seven-to-eight story parking structure Monday afternoon.
The incident was reported about 1:15 p.m. after a woman was seen falling from the structure next to the Ameriquest Mortgage Company building at 784 Lawson Way, near Town and Country Road, said Orange Police Sgt. Sean O’Toole.
The unidentified woman landed on a driveway below and was pronounced dead at the scene.
According to Zillow there are alot of FB sellers asking too much for their homes in my old hood CA 93021. The Townhomes off Campus Park rd have really tumbled down 100K or 25%. I think its only half way to the eventual bottom Ouch.
Someone stick a fork in this guy already.
April 8 (Bloomberg) — Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan said the drop in U.S. home prices will probably end “well before” early next year as the number of houses on the market diminishes, aiding an economic rebound.
“It will not be until early 2009 that we will get close to having eliminated most of this” home inventory, Greenspan told a conference in Tokyo today sponsored by Deutsche Bank AG and co-hosted by Bloomberg LP. “But it is very likely that home prices will stabilize well before that.”
The health of the U.S. housing market is tied to broader financial markets that rely on bundling mortgages to sell as securities, Greenspan said. His successor, Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke, and other Fed officials have highlighted declining home prices as a major economic risk that may further hurt household wealth and consumer spending.
“Once the markets start to stabilize, especially if the real economies don’t go into a severe recession,” then “we can expect a recovery to begin to take place,” Greenspan, 82, said via satellite from Washington. “It will be slow, it will be hesitant.”
He said the extent of damage stemming from the collapse of the subprime-mortgage market won’t be known for months.
“Have we reached a point where prices are stable? We cannot know that for a couple of months,” Greenspan said. “It looks as though we’re going to get a very large rate of liquidation, but not until the second half of this year.”
The conversation changed and changed fast. Funny how people can adapt. I had friends here in LA bragging about how they’re going to turn their $700k condos into millions a couple years ago. Now they’re looking for work wondering when they’ll default. On another note, my car mechanic told me he’s had no business lately. People would rather drive their cars into the ground than pay to maintain them.