Now It’s Not A Trickle In California
The LA Times reports from California. “Houses and condominium units in Los Angeles, Orange, Ventura, San Bernardino, Riverside and San Diego counties sold at a median price of $385,000 last month, the lowest since April 2004, according to DataQuick. The total number of homes sold, 12,808 in Southern California, was about half the average March sales total since DataQuick began compiling its statistics in 1988. Last month’s sales total was down 41.4% from March 2007.”
“Nearly 38% of homes sold in March had been foreclosed at some point in the prior year, up from 8% in March 2007. In recent months, foreclosure resales typically sold for about 15% less than other homes in the surrounding area, DataQuick said.”
The Union Tribune. “San Diego County’s median home price dropped below the $400,000 mark last month for the first time since late 2003, driven largely by discounted foreclosure sales, DataQuick reported.”
“The median, representing the midpoint of all prices reported, has now sunk $122,500, or 23.7 percent, from the peak of $517,500 in November 2005, DataQuick figures show. But the median price is still twice what it was in March 1999.”
“There were 2,108 sales in March, down 34.5 percent from March 2007 and the lowest March total since DataQuick began tracking the San Diego market in 1988. Riverside had the least drop in sales, off 26.9 percent, followed by San Diego and San Bernardino, down 38 percent. Orange County (was) down 19.6 percent.”
“Foreclosure filings in Riverside County surged 30 percent last month and topped year-ago levels by well over 100 percent. A total 7,960 filings of mortgage default notices, auction sale notices and bank repossessions were recorded in Riverside County in March, making it the state’s fourth largest location in terms of foreclosure activity, said RealtyTrac.”
The Press Enterprise. “San Bernardino County had 6,182 foreclosure-related filings, up 25 percent from February and 118 percent from a year earlier. Daren Blomquist, spokesman for RealtyTrac, said the firm had expected an even steeper increase in foreclosures because many mortgages with low introductory interest have been resetting to higher rates.”
“One reason might be that programs aimed at stemming foreclosures are helping, he said. Another possibility is that the foreclosure workload is overwhelming lenders.”
“‘I have heard anecdotally that some people who have not made (mortgage) payments for quite a few months have not had a notice of default yet,’ Blomquist said.”
The Modesto Bee. “No matter how you crunch the numbers, March was a brutal month for foreclosures throughout the Northern San Joaquin Valley. About 2,000 properties in Stanislaus, San Joaquin and Merced counties were repossessed by lenders last month, statistics show.”
“Stanislaus County, particularly, saw a spike last month in the number of homes forced into foreclosure auctions on the courthouse steps. According to ForeclosureRadar, bidders bought only 20 of those homes, with 633 foreclosed properties being returned to lenders.”
“Those lenders lost nearly $208 million on those loans gone bad in Stanislaus County. That was a record loss and a record number of repossessions.”
“Lenders have taken back so many homes in the Northern San Joaquin Valley, they’ve dramatically slashed sales prices in an effort to unload them to new buyers. More than 100 foreclosed Stanislaus houses, for example, will be auctioned by lenders April 29 during a massive sale at Modesto Centre Plaza. Most of those homes have starting bids listed at less than $100,000, and many of them have posted starting bids of $1,000.”
“Stanislaus home prices have plummeted about 30 percent during the past year, according to sales statistics. Sales volume has dropped so much that more homes are being foreclosed every day than are being sold by real estate agents.”
The Bakersfield Californian. “From the day they moved into their brand-new northwest Bakersfield home three years ago, Steven and Marsha Bishop have been dogged by problems — cracks, leaks, mold and more.”
“So when a lawyer’s letter recently showed up asking if they’d like to join a lawsuit against builder Lennar Homes, the couple didn’t hesitate. Owners of 88 other nearby homes are also listed on the complaint.”
“The subdivisions listed in the suit were built almost entirely in the last five years. In the Westlake area, buyers paid between $139,000 to $580,000, according to records from First American Real Estate Solutions.”
“The Bishops bought their four-bedroom home on Chinook Falls Drive in May 2005. Troubles started immediately, they said. ‘You cannot believe the headaches I’ve had with this house,’ Marsha Bishop said.”
“The sinkhole under the garage was particularly troubling. ‘When the dirt’s collapsing under your house, it kind of concerns you,’ said Steven Bishop.”
The Press Democrat. “In three decades in the building industry, Santa Rosa developer Chris Peterson has never seen a housing slump this severe. His company, Rivendale Homes, has been forced to make tough choices to survive.”
“Rivendale has slashed prices 25 percent in its Sonoma County subdivisions since the onset of the downturn in 2005. To make payments to its lenders, Rivendale is tapping into reserves it set aside for times just like this. And to cut costs, the close-knit company has laid off a quarter of its employees, many of whom had worked with Peterson for a decade or more.”
“He predicts local home builders will struggle financially throughout the year. ‘That’s when you’re going to see the brunt of the bloodletting. Profits are way down, and there are some homes that we are losing money on,’ Peterson said.”
“In an attempt to entice buyers, Rivendale has cut its prices sharply and frequently — sometimes weekly. Today, new Rivendale homes sell for between $350,000 and $450,000, about 25 percent less than at the housing market’s peak in 2005.”
“Those prices include $10,000 from the builder to pay closing costs or reduce loan rates, Peterson said.”
“A developable acre sold for $800,000 to $1 million at housing’s peak. Prices are only beginning to come down, and builders likely will wait until land costs settle at about half that range, analysts said.”
“‘Anyone buying land today is very hesitant. You can’t sell homes for what it costs,’ said Jim Scally, new home specialist for North American Title Company. ‘It’s going to take the land people quite some time to realize that they’re not going to get the same value that they were going to get two years ago.’”
The Santa Cruz Sentinel. “Look who’s selling homes in Santa Cruz County. Countrywide, US Bank, Deutsche Bank and Downey Savings and Loan sold homes in March. So did Wachovia and three other financial institutions.”
“Look what’s not selling so fast: Million-dollar homes.”
“In March, only 11 percent of the sales were for more than $1 million and 20 percent were for less than $500,000, according to Gary Gangnes of Real Options Realty, who tracks the data. The trend was the reverse in February, with 24 percent of sales more than $1 million and 19 percent less than $500,000.”
“Only 75 homes sold in March, the fewest number of sales for a month in 11 years, an indication of buyer reluctance despite lower list prices. The previous low — 143 sales — was set last March.”
“Among the factors cooling the market: More foreclosures, dropping values and homeowners having difficulty refinancing, creating a cycle of more foreclosures.”
“In Santa Cruz County, bank-owned homes are selling at a discount. Among the examples in March: 233 Vista Del Mar Drive, Watsonville: Foreclosed in December and sold by Downey Savings and Loan for $490,000. Previously sold for $829,000 in 2005.”
“52 Hawthorne Ave., Watsonville: Foreclosed in January and sold by US Bank for $305,000. Previously sold for $579,000 in 2007. 148 Holly Drive, Watsonville: Foreclosed in July and sold by Credit Suisse for $395,000. Previously sold for $685,000 in 2005.”
“612 Bonita Drive, Aptos: Foreclosed in September and sold by Citigroup for $465,000. Previously sold for $500,000 in 2003.”
“‘REOs really drive down prices in an area because the banks are going to keep lowering the price on a home until it sells,’ said John Wake, an associate broker in Scottsdale, Ariz. ‘Joe Homeseller, on the other hand, often has the option of continuing to live in the home if he does get ‘his price’ so prices don’t fall as fast in areas without a lot of REOs.’”
“Ganges doesn’t specifically track REOs but he found 12 of the 28 homes sold in Watsonville in January, February and March were bank-owned. The 12 properties were on the market an average of 118 days before a purchase contract was obtained, he said. One sold in one day and two others in about two weeks; another took 295 days.”
“Lenders are taking up to 60 days to respond, said Mary Saccullo of Santa Cruz Title Co. ‘I think they’re overwhelmed,’ she said. ‘It was a trickle. Now it’s not a trickle.’”
The San Francisco Chronicle. “Some nights Sonya Smith can’t sleep because she’s worried about how she’ll make payments on her small home in Oakland’s Laurel District. Since getting divorced a couple of years ago, it’s much harder to carry the mortgage - and she can’t sell because the home’s value has declined below the $500,000 she owes on it.”
“‘At the end of last year, I looked really hard for a second job, but nothing panned out,’ said Smith, a technical writer. ‘I started (in this house) with two incomes; the only way I can see out is to get a second income.’”
“An analysis by home-price site Zillow.com of Bay Area homes purchased in 2006 during the height of the real estate frenzy shows that in many outlying areas, more than half of such homes are underwater. The negative equity regions closely track to the places where prices have fallen most steeply, such as eastern Contra Costa County, Oakland, Richmond and Solano County.”
“But even in upscale areas like the Peninsula, Marin and Walnut Creek, Zillow’s analysis shows that a significant percentage of people who purchased in 2006 now owe more on their house than it is worth.”
“‘I’m very concerned about the decline in our home’s value,’ said David Peters, who lives in Hollister (San Benito County). ‘Prior to the market crash, we had been looking at moving up. … Now I don’t even engage in the sort of ‘house lust’ that was so common only a couple of years ago - going to open houses, looking through the newspaper real estate section, dreaming about the possibilities provided by ever-upward spiraling equity.’”
“He and his wife owe close to their home’s current value. ‘We’ve got no flexibility left,’ he said. ‘There’s certainly no possibility to move.’”
“He’s also worried about the long-term future, as he had hoped in a couple of decades to sell the home for enough for a comfortable retirement out of state.”
“‘Who knows what’s going to be happening in 25 years?’ he said. ‘Certainly now you get these pangs of doom; maybe real estate prices will be more equalized across the country.’”
‘‘Prior to the market crash, we had been looking at moving up. … Now I don’t even engage in the sort of ‘house lust’ that was so common only a couple of years ago - going to open houses, looking through the newspaper real estate section, dreaming about the possibilities provided by ever-upward spiraling equity.’
Good grief, do people really talk like that?
‘He’s also worried about the long-term future, as he had hoped in a couple of decades to sell the home for enough for a comfortable retirement out of state.’
So he wanted someone to work the rest of their lives and pay for his retirement. Well, tough. Save you idiot and pay for it yourself.
So he wanted someone to work the rest of their lives and pay for his retirement. Ben - that would be after he worked and paid off the house - what is wrong with that? By your logic, no one should ever buy a used home - why should they finance whatever the seller is going to do next?
I think what Ben is getting at is that this guy wanted to work just a few years to pay off maybe $10k, then sell his house to someone for a $500k profit, and have them work for 30 years to pay that off. Not a very reasonable expectation.
I don’t think Ben’s remarks need any interpretation. They’re fairly self-explanitory.
OK, Sam. Next time I think someone has misunderstood something, I’ll just keep my female trap shut and let you men decide whether or not an explanation is necessary. That way, you guys can screw everything up, then blame it all on women in general instead of owning up to your own stupidity. Does that work for you?
Sure, no problem.
Always works like a charm to blame it on someone else.
Actually, I didn’t quite understand Ben’s remark either. V made it make sense.
“…I’ll just keep my female trap shut…”
Is that what the kids are calling it nowadays? A “trap”? Does make a lot of sense.
Well that is because you are a girl roguevalleygirl.
Just kidding, knuck, knuck, knuck
Your statement makes no sense, would you like to try again ?
So you think a person should be able to sell off a house, buy a house in some pee-wee place like Arizona and live like a king for life, never working? That’s some screwed up thinking. Most houses historically went up just a tad over inflation. Not to mention depreciation, repairs, taxes, etc. My moms house has been paid off for a long time and if she sold it, she might could live on the money for 4 or 5 years, stretching it.
Houses are places to live, not retirement plans.
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“Houses are places to live, not retirement plans.”
And houses are expenditures and not investments – you put money into them and not get money out of them. People need reprogramming, or mental detoxification, just like young cult followers of some gurus in the past.
Jas
Now, wait a minute, Jas.
I’m here to tell you and everyone that my place actually made me money. Happened about a year ago. One fine windy day, a dollar bill blew into my front yard.
Hey Slim, if the serial number is F29805559M, it’s mine. I want that f’er back.
OK now I’m really in trouble, obviously. I was speaking in general terms about one working to pay off a house and going into retirement either downsizing to a smaller place or taking the money and moving to a cheaper area. I didn’t think it was such a radical financial plan. I thought that was a pretty traditional plan - go into retirement with a paid off house so that cost of living was lower.
Those of us in cheaper areas usually pay for that gambit in higher prices. Thanks!
“Houses are places to live, not retirement plans. ”
Just think of all the things houses were during the bubble, besides a place to live:
1. A third salary for the household, via refi.
2. Retirement savings
3. Children’s college fund
4. Vacation fund
I’m sure there are more.
Houses are places to live, not retirement plans.
I’ve seen 1000’s of people in my career do exactly this. I don’t see anything wrong with it. Clients would come down from NY / NJ / PA area after selling their home for 250k. Buy a small condo in FL for 40k and put the balance in the bank at 6%. They’d live off their pension, SocSec. and the interest from their accounts. They could live a nice lifestyle but they were not sticking it to anybody. If anything, the people that have been prudent and saved, and/or paid off the mortgage are getting the short end of the stick. Try putting 200k in the bank today and see how far that gets you with monthly income.
jackie childs
I can confirm yer story of retired northerners in FL & go a bit further …. the auto industry union workers usually died of a heart attack, after retiring to FL, usually in their 50’s, & the widows collected a nice health insurance settlement/annuity/stipend, IN ADDITION to the lucrative auto union surviving-spouse pension, add SS and any investments, which results in a lot of bored, wealthy, widowed, cougars tanning in gulf beach chaise lounges surfside, on the prowl for cabana boys & lifeguards.
not that I would know about that.
or maybe I would
heh heh !
Amen!
comment into wrong place, Amen to;“Houses are places to live, not retirement plans. ”
Houses were a great place to make money for retirement as long as you got out before the crash. I more than doubled my money after 8-9 years and I got to live in my investment during that time. The earnings were tax free. Now housing is a back to work plan as my land lord has discovered. Out of retirement to make up the monthly loss he takes on this place, and it’ll be decade before he can sell it for what he has in it.
You’ve misinterpreted. That greedy idiot expected windfall profits, not a reasonable return.
I agree, he expected bubble size gains indefinitely, when it only took a few years to fall apart.
Speaking of falling apart, great article on Slate about the next CA mortgage crisis (prime borrowers):
http://www.slate.com/id/2188982/
Oooh, oooh, oooh, they got there already?!?
Cr@p!!!
That was a great article.
(From the Slate article):
‘First, those home prices: For a weird few months of the mortgage crisis, statisticians came up with peculiar numbers about home values, rolling out comforting stats showing single-digit declines. Well, that’s over.
Last month, the California Realtors’ association (folks who in October managed to “project” that prices would fall 4 percent in 2008) reported that, actually, California house prices in February fell 26 percent from a year ago. In the places where the foreclosure boom has hit hardest, it’s worse.‘
So much for used home sellers’ (nonexistent) economic forecast capabilities…
When will a home simply be shelter again?
I long for those days…
Good grief, Ben, for the last six odd years, people have done nothing but that!
Why do you think so many here are so exasperated?
It was like the classic movie, Invasion of the Body Snatchers.
Yep, and it didn’t matter if it was a bubble area or not. It was all in, all over.
I would say in 3-5 years.
Does anybody remember the old days in California when a down payment was almost always 20K?
How the hell much is the down payment for the median and for the fancy neighborhood’s median?
Come on now.
Here’s the thing, Ouro. Somewhere there has to be a happy median. Put it this way, if homes require 100-200K down, forget it. Most people won’t and don’t have it and the rest that do, will not sacrifice that much cash unless they can buy outright and eliminate almost the entire cost of housing or that much makes up a large down, say 50-75%.
Otherwise it just doesn’t make sense to put down 100-200K on 500K+ home, unless you make serious coin, even a flat market, or, you have the money to spare.
Hold onto that cash. Maintenance, upkeep, loss of job, etc. are worth more sense of peace knowing it is liquid, than in the form of a house, esp. when you need that cash, i.e. the 300K mile car finally needs to be traded in.
My girlfriend (now my wife) had to come up with $22K in 1987 to buy our first house. That was a good chunk of money to us at that stage of our lives.
Mike
“When will a home simply be shelter again?”
That’s what my house has been since I bought in Jan 2000. I learned from the RE crash of the 1990’s. I moved here with the intention of staying till I die.
What gets me is that there are plenty of people (in California) who are old enough to remember the last downtime for real estate and STILL got sucked in this time.
When the sheeple said “Real estate always goes up”, I was thinking “Yeah, and it always goes down, too”. I’m not that smart and even I could figure that one out.
…dreaming about the possibilities provided by ever-upward spiraling equity.
Sounds like a wet dream, fueled by housing porn, inspired by house lust.
Ponzi schemes are a powerful aphrodisiac.
The only spiraling this greedhead dreamer is going to see, is the slow ascending spiral of Sammy the Housing Vulture floating liesurely on the thermals, scanning the landscape for the choicest pickings of the carrion left by the Great Housing Capitulation of 2009-2011.
“Why Soar with the Eagles, When You Can Feast With the Vultures?”
hey man, first thing they teach in high school econ is:
sex sells
Right, Ben. That is a message we should not forget on this board. It was never reasonable or fair for the GFs to expect SOMEONE ELSE TO WORK FOR THE REST OF THEIR LIVES in order to provide said GF with a comfortable retirement. These FB act like something has been taken away from them. Like they bought a lottery ticket, didn’t win, and now they think the government owes them something. No way. No one is offering to fund my retirement, so why should I fund theirs?
I’ve noticed all these people had the same plan. Buy house, get rich, move somewhere cheaper. When everyone has the the same plan it can’t possibly work out for everyone, just the first ones in and out.
Exactly. Classic pyramid scheme.
“So you think a person should be able to sell off a house, buy a house in some pee-wee place like Arizona and live like a king for life, never working?”
IMO, substitute Civil Servants with FBs and it’s the same concept — esp. here in New York, where the ticks are now bigger than the host.
For the Long Islanders on the board, how do you like paying those cops a 150K a year — for life?
Some yahoo pulled this off in my hometown of Ridgewood, NJ. Newark Star-Ledger dug this meatball up. Last 2 years he racked up something like 24/7 OT and he retired at 48 with a full pension at…
$148,000/year for the rest of his life. Not only that, this guy was a sgt., not the chief. And this in a town where the worst thing is a cat stuck in the tree.
Now at 48, guess what he still has time to go back part-time w/the force, or get another job, put in 20 years and get SS.
What a crock. And we wonder why local taxes keep going up.
This is what is going to kill all goobermint workers at local levels, inc. me, working for the OC.
Just a big ponzi scheme.
Now don’t all jump on me, but that’s exactly what we did. We knew the bubble was going to pop, last kid off to college so we looked for a place that was cheaper than CA to take our equity and set ourselves up for retirement later. We were also looking for a better suited house (1 story) and an area that had medical and cultural opportunities. Other half went off to OH where we got twice as much house for 1/3 the money. We were looking for lower overhead now so we can save more for retirement and for lower costs going into the future. We thought we were being responsible, but from comments today, I’m not sure anyone else sees it that way. We weren’t trying to rip off anyone else or make a big killing and certainly don’t see the OH house as any kind of investment except as a reasonable place to live in our old age.
If the FB bought your house, it’s his/her fault. You were just taking the best offer. My thing is all these FB who think they were entitled to that kind of profit, even though they missed their opportunity to sell. They were entitled to nothing. They could have gotten lucky if they weren’t so damned dumb.
Don’t hate the playa, hate the game!
Man, we never did that. We were happy to buy something we could afford. We got design ideas and enjoy doing things to our place, but they’re low-cost, sweat equity things.
In the Bay Area where I lived, many people had no retirement, as they could barely make the mortgage payment. They were indeed counting on their house to provide a retirement. If my ex and I had bought in Santa Cruz back in ‘94, we’d have been in the same boat. It really is a different place.
Had?!? Still don’t.
My sister lives there, and Shallow-Alto is like poser-central. They’re all depending on their “options”.
Retirement?
BWAHAHHAHAHAHHAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!
“So he wanted someone to work the rest of their lives and pay for his retirement.”
Common strategy in CA which is one reason I sold early and moved to AZ to beat the boomers at their own game.
Hey Ben, shall I put it into technical terms for the hoi polloi?
1) House A has a value of $200k. House B has a value of $400k.
2) A few years pass, there is 50% appreciation over that period.
3) Let’s assume 100% financing and now principal paydown. The equity of House A is now $100k.
4) Owner of House A sells and “invests” the “profit” into House B.
5) Uh-oh. House B now costs $600k, so the new debt will be $500k.
6) Would have been better for buyer to buy House B from the start. They buyer would have had $400k debt instead of $500k.
Conclusion: It makes no sense the way people talk about “appreciation” helping them “move up” into a better house. Fundamentally, it can’t, because it makes a more expensive house appreciate all the more than the starter home you bought.
People have a tendency to think times of appreciation will allow them to move up into nicer digs, but the opposite is closer to reality. A lot of folks just don’t grasp this.
Of course, if the buyer is making 50% more than they did before, then the nicer house is just as affordable. But what does that have to do with appreciation? Nothing.
In an underwater state, under the banner of the Loan Red Star…
http://www.climbwild.net/images/California_flag.jpg
Dataquick headline: “Southland home sales log tepid gain; record price drop.”
Let’s hear it for the spring bounce!
“Let’s hear it for the spring bounce!”
Naw, Yun & Co will say “We’ve reached the bottom, and now it is turning around!”
To which we will reply “We’ve reached the bottom, let the hip-thrusting begin!”
The way I see it, the bottom is only half-way down. We still got the knees and feet to go.
Just when you think you’ve run of out bad things to say about Bakersfield…
“The sinkhole under the garage was particularly troubling. ‘When the dirt’s collapsing under your house, it kind of concerns you,’ said Steven Bishop.”
“But even in upscale areas like the Peninsula, Marin and Walnut Creek, Zillow’s analysis shows that a significant percentage of people who purchased in 2006 now owe more on their house than it is worth.”
I’m sorry, but I don’t think any of these areas can be classified as “upscale”. Marin is an old-folks’ haven with very few high-paying jobs. Walnut Creek is an exurb, and “the Peninsula” is a large swath of land encompassing myriad neighborhoods. Personally, I think the peninsula is overcrowded. While there a few enclaves of the Bay Area where multimillionaires do congregate, even those places would be considered cramped by non-California standards. At any rate, “middle class” would probably be a better way to describe the areas listed above.
When the value of a house really meant something, high dollar value was an accurate reflection of the term ‘upscale’. A casuality of the bubble are term of relative measurement, where a million means zip.
Marin is an upper-income bedroom suburb of San Francisco. The high-paying jobs are in the city, not in Marin. And there are a lot of them. As the financial services industry gets whacked, so will they.
No one really wants to commute into the city from Marin. Those people are all just doing it because they want the equity. Well, well, well.
BTW, the residental vacancy rate in SF is around 15%, so it’s not just a matter of people being forced to move out to the burbs.
–
“BTW, the residental vacancy rate in SF is around 15%…”
Would appreciate link/source.
Jas
Test. I tried to paste a tiny url, but it isn’t showing up. Search for “onboard neighborhood navigator”.
I have several co-workers who commute to Santa Clara from Marin County. I don’t think they do it for the equity (during the bubble you could get that in the City or on the peninsula just as easily) but because they like the rustic setting. God knows when they find the time to enjoy it. Marin never appealed that much to me except as a place with great hiking trails.
Trust me, it’s the equity. People are fooled into thinking that prices can’t go down in pricey hoods. Those coworkers of yours will move as soon as they realize what’s going on, or as soon as they’re foreclosed upon.
Besides, if you work in Santa Clara and like it rustic, then why not live in Los Gatos or Saratoga? You’d be better off living in Santa Cruz where the prices are cheaper and the ambiance more rustic, as long as you’re taking on that kind of a commute. Long-distance commuters can’t use “lifestyle” as an excuse for their behavior; it’s always motivated by money. It used to be that people lived far away because that’s all they could afford (to rent or buy). Recently, they’ve started doing it for equity reasons. Too bad gas isn’t cheap anymore. Guess they should have paid more attention in ecology class.
I think they are looking for snob appeal. There’s a whole lot more rustic in the Santa Cruz mountains than in Marin.
I would commute from Marin to SF. But not everyday. Would have to have a job that lets me telecommute 2 - 3 days a week. Really like having a garden. A pool would be neat, too.
in my SF days, one of my bosses lived in Marin (Mill Valley, and she’s still there). She would come in and leave slightly “off” everyone else’s schedule–so she’d get to the office around 9:30 or 10 am and leave correspondingly later. It meant that her commute was 20 minutes, not 45.
Big V,
Depends on your perspective what crowded is. I’ve lived on the Peninsula most of my life and don’t consider the Peninsula crowded.
Now, what I would considered crowded is the East and South Bay.
Yeah exactly that comment wasn’t quite right… sure it’s crowded along the 101 corridor, somewhat, but it gets pretty spacious and beautiful west of 280. Plenty of little places in the Santa Cruz mountains.
Arrgh,
Considered is consider.
There are lots of places you have probably missed. Palomar Park, for example. Portola Valley also. Sure it is crowded, but it is similar to other rich premium areas. The high paying jobs for most of these places are in the City or the Valley.
Genuine premium properties are mostly populated by hired help anyway, at least nowadays.
““A developable acre sold for $800,000 to $1 million at housing’s peak. Prices are only beginning to come down, and builders likely will wait until land costs settle at about half that range, analysts said.”…‘Anyone buying land today is very hesitant. You can’t sell homes for what it costs,’ said Jim Scally, new home specialist for North American Title Company. ‘It’s going to take the land people quite some time to realize that they’re not going to get the same value that they were going to get two years ago.’”
This is interesting…if prices dropped in half, they could afford to build a house. This implies that there is some kind of ceiling in what buyers are willing to pay. I wonder what they think that is? It seems now more than ever that home prices are a moving target.
They will drop by 50% from peak before buying makes any sense.
“‘At the end of last year, I looked really hard for a second job, but nothing panned out,’ said Smith, a technical writer. ‘I started (in this house) with two incomes; the only way I can see out is to get a second income.’”
Do you guys realize that the average technical writer in the Bay Area earns $90k/year. And this is a small house in Oakland that we’re talking about here.
It’s been that way forever, which is why I moved away in ‘94 - loss of an income could well mean loss of the house. We were about to buy; it took both incomes. When my wife came home announcing that she had quit her job due to the stress, we knew at that point it was time to move. There was no way we were going forward on one income - heck, we wouldn’t have qualified.
But no, it hasn’t been that way forever. When my mom met my dad, he was living in a house on a hill in Ocean Beach (San Diego) with a kick-ass view. No room mates. I don’t know what he was doing for a living. I think he told me he was a manicurist because that was a good way to meet pretty women. Anyway, he spent most of his time smoking pot and surfing. You want one of those houses today? Better be a DINK couple with at least 4 college degrees between the two of you. Ridiculous. Totally not normal and not in line with history.
And they better be the moneymaker degrees…
My ex lives there and that is what he still does today. He is probably a friend of your dad’s.
“Anyway, he spent most of his time smoking pot and surfing.”
Ocean Beach and PB are such junky neighborhoods with really old, tiny rundown homes and the ‘white trash’ that inhabits the beaches in the summer..really special. no Thanks I’ll pass I don’t care how good the view is. The CA coastline has TONS of nicer places
yeah but its a small house with a $500K Mortgage, way more than $90K a year can afford. She should have given up the house when she got divorced but Nooooooo……….
A race to the voyage of the bottom of the real estate market…
“‘REOs really drive down prices in an area because the banks are going to keep lowering the price on a home until it sells,’ said John Wake, an associate broker in Scottsdale, Ariz. ‘Joe Homeseller, on the other hand, often has the option of continuing to live in the home if he does get ‘his price’ so prices don’t fall as fast in areas without a lot of REOs.’”
Not if Joe H’s mortgage payment is higher than his take-home pay!
Black is white, up is down, wrong is right. It’s different this time. They can’t pay ;0
“One reason might be that programs aimed at stemming foreclosures are helping, he said. Another possibility is that the foreclosure workload is overwhelming lenders.”
And my box full of stupid is just small enough to guess sentence #2. Banks really aren’t any good at selling or managing houses, or handling them as assets to be managed. They want to make money with money - and getting the house back was not in their plan.
So true. Have mentioned before, my 15 years in the lending business included 3 repos. In each case I sold the repo as fast as I possibly could, despite knowing that a little patience might fetch me a better price. Bank (or me) does not want to pay the expenses of hanging onto the property and hoping for better days.
the bank personnel are in no hurry to rush the repo sales process because as long as the backlog exists there is job security. people getting all verklemped about how slow the banks are responding & handling the foreclosures dont take this into account.
why on earth would the average bank paper-pusher work faster & more effeciently processing REO’s? I mean, really, what is the advantage to working yerself out of a job??! They wont get any more money in their paychecks, like the fee harvestors did on loan intakes, by working harder to process foreclosures . . . just some overtime. Big deal!
And you just know the execs are giving tacit approval to the bottlenecks by claiming they are all so “clogged up by volume”. No hurry to sell off the houses as it confirms they suck as managers & should be fired.
job slowdown/feet dragging is the best way to stretch out financial employment as long as possible.
Classic principal-agent problem.
DataQuick didn’t mention the MONTHLY declines from February to March, so I took the liberty of calculating them:
Los Angeles, $460k to $440k, down 4.3%
Orange, $520k to $506k, down 2.7%
Riverside, $325k to $306.25k, down 5.8%
San Bernardino, $290k to $265k, down 8.6%
San Diego, $415k to $395k, down 4.8%
Ventura, $445k to $430k, down 3.4%
SoCal, $408k to $385k, down 5.6%
These are pretty stunning declines for one month, especially at a time of year when prices usually rise!
–
40% annual rate decline, on PPSF basis, has been going on in many metros in the US (most of them in CA) for more than 6 months. What if many areas turned into Sacramentos, Stocktons and Las Vegases? Scary thought, eh?
Jas
“San Diego, $415k to $395k, down 4.8%”
Annualized rate of decline:
((395/415)^12-1)*100 = -44.7 pct.
If this rate keeps up, SD housing will nearly be affordable again by this time next year.
And the median price is still 317,000 in Humboldt, of all places. We’ve barely gone down 5% from the top, yet in SoCal they experience that drop in a month. I want mine!!!
Anthony,
Patience my dear man. Prices didn’t climb overnight. Remember it will take some time for prices to drop, and they will drop.
–
CA still in the lead in the worst down trends…
I monitor Radar Logic data daily (Case-Shiller is the most accurate but it is monthly and has bigger time-lag due to 3M averaging; RL is quite close but more reflective of the current trend).
Here are the trend Annual Rates for past 6.5 months based on the latest RL report:
(Average of 6.5M, 3.5M and 1.5M Annual Rates)
The Worst Price Per Sq Ft Trend Metros as per the Latest Radar Logic Data:
-41.8% San Fran, CA
-41.7% Las Vegas, NV
-41.5% Sacramento, CA
-35.2% San Diego, CA
-34.6% Boston, MA
-31.7% Denver, CO
-30.1% Tampa, FL
-19.7% 25 MSA Composite
And they have been very consistent for several weeks. SF is in the lead due to the rural counties included in the metro.
Jas
I heard a real estate shill on the radio this afternoon explaining that the reason underpinning these numbers in So Cal is because of the cheaper areas selling, but not the pricey Westside. Sigh.
I hear you. Most of my friends are in total denial in “it’ll never happen here”. Anecdotal:
2 friends are selling. One’s sold at a loss. The other has had no buyers. Both are ‘prime’ westside locations but they won’t see it that way.
A third is considering a short sale buy.
All the better to argue with, my dear refugee.
The last dissenters left on this blog are those who argue that the pricier hoods cannot/will not suffer price declines. Well, if the median is going down due to a lack of sales in high-end neighborhoods, then prices there must come DOWN to meet demand, no?
Just sit back and enjoy the show.
Westside was the last to fall last time too, but when it finally did, it was a mighty fall indeed. This time should be even more spectacular.
From the SF Chronicle article:
“The Associated Press-AOL Money & Finance telephone poll of 1,002 adults, including 769 homeowners, portrayed a public afflicted with anxiety about what will happen to their pocketbooks in the near future. Those anxieties also show how the slumping real estate market has led to a weakened economy.”
Yet another case of misdrawn conclusions. Just because the housing slump is happening at the same time as the weak economoy, doesn’t mean that the one caused the other or vice versa. They are correlated, but no causation has been proven. Why aren’t journalists trained in critical thinking? If this journalist were to apply “logic 101″ to the situation, than she would realize there is another possibility. Perhaps there is some third factor that is causing both things to happen simultaneously. I don’t expect most people to understand the credit crunch and how it’s an inevitable consequence of recent lending practices (RE, CC, commercial, private equity, etc.), but journalists should at least ask the BASIC QUESTIONS.
LATimes says we’re back to 2004 price levels in southern cal. I wonder when the ‘prime’ areas of LA will begin to follow. People are still clinging to “it can’t happen here” in the westside…
in Orange County average/mean price per square fot is approx. 2% below 2004 levels.
–
The Union Tribune. “San Diego County’s median home price dropped below the $400,000 mark last month for the first time since late 2003, driven largely by discounted foreclosure sales, DataQuick reported.”
“The median, representing the midpoint of all prices reported, has now sunk $122,500, or 23.7 percent, from the peak of $517,500 in November 2005, DataQuick figures show. But the median price is still twice what it was in March 1999.”
SD was the leading edge of the bubble. It will be a good leading indicator of when the prices might stabilize. I do expect a second leg after that and even a third leg down because the recession would be prolonged despite some false alarms.
Jas
“The poll also showed that 60 percent of respondents said they definitely will not buy a house or condo in the next two years, up from 53 percent when the poll was previously conducted in September 2006. Only 11 percent said they are likely to buy soon.
Poll respondents also think that homes are still overvalued. A total of 47 percent - almost the same as 46 percent in 2006 - think the housing market in their area is overpriced.
A huge majority - 82 percent - of respondents think it is “very” or “somewhat” difficult for most first-time home buyers to afford a home.”
This is more evidence that we have completed the 3rd inning. Most people don’t want to buy now.
–
“Most of those homes have starting bids listed at less than $100,000, and many of them have posted starting bids of $1,000.”
This show is coming to a town near you. Unless you live in one of the 5% ritzy zip codes.
Jas
Even if you live in a ritzy zip, even you are a Ritz, you’ll still get to see the show. It will just be a rerun by then, though.
Funniest home listing phrase I’ve seen to date - down in Playa Del Rey - FINAL PRICE REDUCTION
Really? Does that come with a gun attached that will force some knife catcher to spit out a couple hundred grrr? Sorry Skippy - the buyer (if you find one) will tell you your final price reduction.
Comical.
Indeed. Playa Del Rey is WAY overpriced. An old roommate was on their waiting list for 4 years before buying.
In looking around at the open houses, imagine a 2 bedroom 2 bath condo. Each unit is two stories, in a four story building. Giant underground parking. Want to guess the asking a couple years ago? Over $600k plus homeowners assoc dues of $500+/Month plus Mello Roos of 300. (ball park figures on the HOA and MR)
The thought is that everyone wants to live there, and that the rich video game programmers with their company stock will want to live across the street. Except their stock is down, and from what I have read, so is demand for the unfinished buildings with “Final Price Reduction” plastered across them.
4K a month w/nothing down. Where do I sign up?
What a joke! Geez, that means you should be taking home about 12K a month, which is what 250K a year?
Come on!
More like $144k/year, which is at least within the realm of the feasible for most people, especially dual-income households.
It’s still hilariously overpriced, though, and an HOA of any kind is an automatic deal-killer for me.
About $218k before taxes.
You’re referring to Playa Vista, not that Playa del Rey is affordable either (but at least no mello roos)!
“He’s also worried about the long-term future, as he had hoped in a couple of decades to sell the home for enough for a comfortable retirement out of state.”
This belief is like a cancer in California, working and saving money are no longer required, merely living is a home will take care of your retirement.
That cancer has spread from California to NY, DC, and a few other areas. But a funny thing happens if it settles in too strongly… the area home prices drop to what wages can support.
What was the seasonally adjusted anual sales for March? I think that could be very interesting.
Got Popcorn?
Neil
“He’s also worried about the long-term future, as he had hoped in a couple of decades to sell the home for enough for a comfortable retirement out of state.”
“‘Who knows what’s going to be happening in 25 years?’ he said. ‘Certainly now you get these pangs of doom; maybe real estate prices will be more equalized across the country.’”
———————-
“More equalized across the country” you say? Sort of like the “No California house is really worth any premium over a house in most of the rest of the US, unless it is within WALKING distance of the ocean” - exactly what I said yesterday?
This blue state dipwad talks about being “equalized” with the dumb, bitter hicks across the US (Barack’s words, not mine) with “pangs of doom” - as if the abilty to sell in the chosen land of California and then decend upon flyover country with all your hundreds of thousands and live a life of luxury as the peons tend to your retirement needs was part of the promise of the golden state?
Guess what lefty - nobody wants you or your elitist attitude - so stay in La-La land and live in the third-world cesspool you and all the other “progressive” Californians have created for yourselves. And by the way - your 40 year old 2/1 bungalow on a 4000 square foot lot is worth about $50,000, just like it would be in Alabama or Colorado.
If/when I start looking at REOs and short sales here in AZ, I’ll do my best to find Californina investor (infestor?) properties, and then do my best to make them cry during the negotiations.
Oh, az_owner. You come off as being so offensive. You know CA will always be more expensive than AZ. AZ is a desert. CA has a mediteranian environment. That is the most desirable environment for a human being (I learned that in phyisical geography class). The only part of CA that is not climatically desirable is the Mojave desert. Even when you go inland, it’s still much, much, much better than AZ. Oh, and our university system rocks, too.
For someone who supposedly is Mensa material and contemptuous of anyone from Texas, I find it fairly “interesting” that you misspell “Mediterranean.”
I know, it’s late at night and you misspoke.
Typo. Don’t come on the CA thread and insult Californians if you can’t hang.
Big V, I’ll be the first to agree that a nice oceanfront property in La Jolla or Hermosa Beach, or something nice up in Monterey has a lot of value, and should be priced a little higher than a comparable property elsewhere.
But to think that a run-down crackerbox in Sacramento, Dublin, Stockton, Fresno, Oakland, Riverside, Bakersfield, or El Cajon somehow “deserves” a 300% price premium compared to the same size/quality of a house in Georgia, Arkansas, Texas or yes, even Arizona is just crazy.
Those cities are not part of the “gold coast” that makes California a “nice place”. Combined with the chronic government problems, budget deficits, fleeing businesses, falling tax revenues, massively increasing public welfare/benefit/pension obligations, and the insane traffic and crowding rivaling that of a Bangladeshi marketplace, there is no reason for any sane middle/upper middle class person to try to eke out a living there.
So now the Californians in this article are afraid that losing their “deserved equity” may not enable them to live like royalty in flyover land, and it just makes the rest of us who have had to put up with self-righteous California equity clowns contributing to the ruination of OUR property markets (about 25% of the speculators in AZ were CA residents over the past few years) a little happy that maybe finally they will have to live out their days in the progressive paradise they have created, and just stay the heck away from the rest of us.
I do visit some of the nicer parts of California every year, and when I leave I usually think “that was fun, but THANK GOD I don’t have to live here.”
Yes, California is awful. It is a terrible place to live. Flyover country is heaven on earth. There is no reason for a California premium over, for example, AZ. Everyone listen to AZ and don’t move here/move away.
Thank you for your cooperation.
Don’t worry. They’ll be “equalized” into the Pacific Ocean by that time. LOL
I’m a lefty and a progressive (with a fair “legacy” amount of bitter hick in the mix too) - those people you are talking to aren’t…
There is a long standing pattern of relatively high incomes warping property markets around LA and SF and that isn’t going to go away. With some price corrections California will still end up dramatically overpriced at the bottom.
It is interesting that so much of California is taking so long to tank. Last time other areas were recovering when the deep pain phase was just starting to hit, especially near the coast.
The “dumb, bitter, hicks” poem is your own and you know that. The price differential that settles into high growth areas like big coastal estuary cities is well entrenched and documented. It matches the with the wild economic fluxuations that come with waves of growth and decline. It might make sense to be upset about this, but the question is what to do about it and not who to be mad at. Things didn’t get truly ugly until the bubble unbalanced everything completely, and that part of it is going away as we post.
That growth has effects like this and occurs most where social capital is least is actually quite interesting and probably important. The way discussion of this goes political reminds me of global warming. There is an interesting book by an early warming dissenter called The Heated Debate which argued that the science and those things that are measurable or provable are what is interesting, not so much the politics. Ben Jones has also said similar things here about politics. It is an inevitable part of the narrative of this whole set of changes, but it is actually less compelling than the phenomena itself viewed without all the contextual filtering.
–
“The Bishops bought their four-bedroom home on Chinook Falls Drive in May 2005. Troubles started immediately, they said. ‘You cannot believe the headaches I’ve had with this house,’ Marsha Bishop said.”
Had they borrowed 95%+ they would have a cheap option to Walk Away after living for free for 6-9 months (until one is evicted after stopping mortgage payments). I guess the idea of risk of homeownership didn’t enter too many minds.
Jas
““The sinkhole under the garage was particularly troubling. ‘When the dirt’s collapsing under your house, it kind of concerns you,’ said Steven Bishop.”
Oh good. Maybe there’ll be some construction work out there after all, patching together all the junk that was throw up in the last few years.
There is no doubt that most constructions put up the last few years are shoddy at best due to unqualified illegal immigrants. Based on the recent interviews done by LV Sun, they found out that 60-80% of construction workers in LV are illegal from Mexico. Now that works have dried up, they are heading back to Mejico.
I’ve had plenty of opportunities to watch these illegals doing the construction jobs that Americans just won’t do. They are indeed fast workers, but they’re also sloppy, careless workers.
Case in point: I once saw an apartment building that had part of its roofing paper blown off in a storm. And did the whizbang roofing crew go up there to patch the place that was missing its paper? Nope, they just shingled right over it.
Why blame the crews for the substandard buildings? I blame the builders who chose to skimp on construction time and materials; and the contractors who chose to hire the unskilled, illegal crews.
I blame the people that hire the f’ers
I blame the people/companies that hire them.
I also blame peoples attitudes. It seems everyone wants everything at the absolute minimum cost (think China/Wal-Mart) without looking at the macro view.
One example I’ll give. A neighbor of mine and I were replacing our fence. He was also replacing his side fence with another neighbor who’s a pilot for United. Well these two went to a local Home Depot to pick up two wetbacks.
They had them digging, removing old concrete, etc. My neighbor asked me if I would like to use them on our fence. I told him I don’t even want to see these people in my neighborhood, let alone my country. The irony is the pilot. Here he wants to get some labor at a rock bottom price. I seem to recall the pilots association bemoaning wage cuts during the last round of negotiations.
And guess what? We have had a run of recent burglaries in the area. Same description of the perps (hispanic male, etc).
Now what Mr. pilot.
There’s nothing more expensive than cheap labor.
Mike
Ummm, it’s not that local people won’t do these construction jobs, it’s that they have been priced out of them. I have a friend who has worked construction his whole life and now says the only stuff he can do/will do is high end interior, because he’s been priced out of framing, etc.
Lenders never lose @ this sort of fixed auction, with 97% of the “winning” bids…
“Stanislaus County, particularly, saw a spike last month in the number of homes forced into foreclosure auctions on the courthouse steps. According to ForeclosureRadar, bidders bought only 20 of those homes, with 633 foreclosed properties being returned to lenders.”
Lenders never lose @ this sort of fixed auction, with 97% of the “winning” bids…
“Stanislaus County, particularly, saw a spike last month in the number of homes forced into foreclosure auctions on the courthouse steps. According to ForeclosureRadar, bidders bought only 20 of those homes, with 633 foreclosed properties being returned to lenders.”
RE: WESTSIDE LA
Actually, we know when Westside LA implodes. When the 5-1 Option Arms reset. They exploded on the westside in early 2004. Westside LA’s big fall (asking prices have already fallen alot) starts second half of 08 through 2011.
Remember, most of the ‘equity’ is tied up in their house–that’s what will get destroyed in the short sale. People will be able to get out from under the reset only by kissing the boom’s gains goodbye. Like dot-com, very few will get out with gains intact.
Westiside will drop by 50% from here. 2 million will be one million. Three million will be 1.5. Its amazing but many well off families will go through a real wringer starting very soon in West LA.
X-man,
At first it will be the resets, but eventually people will just “get out” when they see the writting on the wall. I still think 2009 will see the greatest price drops.
Not to mention… so many of those Westsiders are going to see an income hit… when they spent 40%+ of their income on housing, that doesn’t leave much wiggle room in a downturn.
Got Popcorn?
Neil
–
“An analysis by home-price site Zillow.com of Bay Area homes purchased in 2006 during the height of the real estate frenzy shows that in many outlying areas, more than half of such homes are underwater.”
IF the current trend of 20% annual rate drop, nation-wide, continues then half the homes with mortgages in the US would be under water by mid-2009. What happens to the economy and housing if that were to happen? Scary thought?
Jas
Hi Jas:
How did you come to that number? In order for 1/2 of mortgages to be underwater with just a 50% drop from peak, they all would have had to HELOC their way under there. Do we know how many have HELOCed or what percentage of their “equity” they borrowed?
–
Rough estimates are:
There are 51M homes with mortgages and about 1/3rd have low balances. So, most of the mortgage debt is highly concentrated.
The estimated value of the homes (35M or so) with high mortgage-to-value at the peak was $12-13Tr.
The latest mortgage debt amount was close to $10.5Tr.
If the prices were to be down 30% from the peak, nation-wide, then based on the above I expect that majority of the 51M homes would be under water. Think about $8-9Tr debt concentrated in 35M homes.
Jas
And add in job loss etc from the recession and it could go as high as 75% underwater/foreclosure. I think this time around companies will lay off a lot of their 50+ age work force because of pay and pension and try a bit more outsourcing.
This will bite deeply in the group that has equity but may hang on till foreclosure. And a good percentage of these homes would have less than 100k of equity. So its not like they are going to sell and go into early retirement.
Another factor is pension plans may actually not pay as they where heavily invested in this mess along with a lot of personal investment so you will get a lot of house that were paid off coming on the market as financial and medical emergencies force sales.
I think that 50% of homes have mortgages so I think its fair to think that we may see 50% of the homes for sale by 2010 to be some sort of forced or duress sale. This will cause even more price declines.
And of course oil/food prices will keep spiraling upwards to potential buyers will have even less cash and by then scared to death of losing their job.
Key words were “purchased in 2006.” Now do you get it Big V?
Jas was talking about all homes with mortgages in the US.
Heard it from a friend, who heard it from a friend, that real estate comps have been coming down…
“‘REOs really drive down prices in an area because the banks are going to keep lowering the price on a home until it sells,’ said John Wake, an associate broker in Scottsdale, Ariz. ‘Joe Homeseller, on the other hand, often has the option of continuing to live in the home if he does get ‘his price’ so prices don’t fall as fast in areas without a lot of REOs.’”
You really have a gift at these - thanks for the laughs.
Heard it from a friend who
Heard it from a friend who
Heard it from another you been messin around
They say you got a boy friend
Youre out late every weekend
Theyre talkin about you and its bringin me down
But I know the neighborhood
And talk is cheap when the story is good
And the tales grow taller on down the line
But Im telling you, babe
That I dont think its true, babe
And even if it is keep this in mind
{refrain}
You take it on the run baby
If thats the way you want it baby
Then I dont want you around
I dont believe it
Not for a minute
Youre under the gun so you take it on the run
Youre thinking up your white lies
Youre putting on your bedroom eyes
You say youre coming home but you wont say when
But I can feel it coming
If you leave tonight keep running
And you need never look back again
{refrain x 3}
Heard it from a friend who
Heard it from a friend who
Heard it from another you been messin around
I danced with a man
who danced with a girl
who danced with the Prince of Wales
(might as well quote a song from the 1930s, dontcha think?)
You bet Jean.
Right now I’m listening to the number one songs of 1974, the year I graduated from high school.
Here’s a link you may enjoy: http://www.tropicalglen.com/
Sonya Smith can’t sleep because she’s worried about how she’ll make payments on her small home in Oakland’s
Sonya, remember about 10 yrs ago when you could have gotten the same crappy house for about $80K. Of course, I am not sure whether is it the stress of your ridiculous mortgage or the threat of the gunfire from the hoodlums outside that are keeping you awake. Either one could be responsible. Hope you have your Doberman and heat for protection in da’ hood.
“So when a lawyer’s letter recently showed up asking if they’d like to join a lawsuit against builder Lennar Homes, the couple didn’t hesitate. Owners of 88 other nearby homes are also listed on the complaint.”
Lets see. Guesstimate a $12 million settlement. 88 home owners get $50 Lowes gift cards, Lawyer(s) get….
I know..that is why I would never join a class action suit..it is just a way for a bunch of lawyers to get MILLIONS of DOLLARS from their 30% cut.. and you get breakfast on the McDonalds $1 menu…
I was in a class action suit against Southwestern Bell in ‘90 or so, about them overcharging on line repair insurance. Went through a couple of years of phone bills to provide detailed records. In the end the lawyers got $7 or $9 million or the like and the consumers got an offer of 3 months free features - after 3 months you could cancel or start paying.
Sonya Smith can’t sleep because she’s worried about how she’ll make payments on her small home….
From my large rented home, subsidized by my landlord, I have no such worries. Babies don’t sleep this well.
Hey Ben - these charts made me think of the original bubble blog: Back to 2004 home prices in Southern California
“Look what’s not selling so fast: Million-dollar homes.”
Told you all before about a community in the area that all the homes are basically million dollar plus(known to the locals as the DEAD ZONE..out in the middle of nowhere..well..guess the first foreclosure in there has scared all the builders..notice that most of those home are being slashed in prices and are starting to advertise “WILL TAKE ANY REASONABLE OFFER!”
Woah - signed another years lease.
Yeeh, my hubby loves me NOT.
Lord knows we have tried to find a home - ahhhhh - a bitter renter?
NO!
Rented before, renting now - It’s all good!
Thank you for your friendship.
Leigh
Leighsong,
Hope everything works out for you and your husband.
Have you seen the first two episodes of Battlestar G? Frack they are great.
Yep me too. Just signed my lease for another year. Only bad part is the rent in the area may go down from what it is now. But hey it’s still better than paying 2-3x what im paying now to own.
I live in Marin. *sniff*. I’m BETTER then you.
Caughtchya posing, FL!