Housing in California is years away from a bottom. Let me make that clear and if you have any doubts, after reading this essay you will have a better understanding as to how I arrived at that conclusion. This article is longer since it will try to answer many of the arguments from [...] Related Posts: ■ California Budget Details: How the Recession Will Affect Revenues for the State. ■ Riding in the Short Bus of Housing: Southern California Short Sale Numbers. 1 in 10 Homes is a Distress Sale. ■ San Diego Down 4.5 percent YOY - or $42,000 from Peak. ■ A Lost Decade of Housing Equity: Los Angeles and Orange County will hit a Housing Price Bottom in May 2011 seeing May 2003 Prices. ■ Redefining Success: One Year of Inventory and 27 Percent Annual Drop for Southern California. Is This the Elusive Bottom?

The California housing market is facing a major calamity. In April of 2007 California reached a peak median price of $597,640 only to see those gains erased in the following year. By June of 2008, the median price in California is hovering at $368,250, a drop of 38.38% with no signs of slowing [...] Related Posts: ■ How Many People Overpaid for Their Home in Los Angeles County? Trying to get a Raw Number of Households Underwater. ■ Predicting the Housing Future: Los Angeles and Orange Counties. Using the Case-Shiller Index to Find a Bottom. ■ Of Bubbles Past. Need a Map for Housing? Ask a Housing Perma-Bull and They’ll See the World Through Colored Glasses! ■ Southern California Housing Numbers Exposed: The Bottom Falls out of the Housing Market, Again. ■ Don’t Catch a Falling Guillotine: Housing Free Falling in Southern California. A Deep Look at the Numbers.

“Americans, while occasionally willing to be serfs, have always been obstinate about being peasantry.” - F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby The Great Gatsby was published in 1925 and chronicles the Jazz Age and captures some of the excess of the roaring 20s.  F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote the novel during a time in which there was booming [...] Related Posts: ■ Bank Failure: IndyMac Bank. Lessons from the Great Depression Part XIV. Bank Failures. ■ The Lords of Money Speak: Even the Prime Will Fall. Lessons From the Great Depression Part XV. The King JPMorgan Speaks. ■ The Sham of our Current Unemployment Rate Numbers: Lessons from the Great Depression: Part X. Data Mining. ■ The Day Housing Faced the Plague of Locusts: Lessons from The Great Depression Part XIII. Facing our Own Economic Pilgrimage. ■ Home Shopping Crisis Network: When the Ballyhoo Years Turn Into Relics of Excess. Lessons from the Great Depression Part XVI: Items That Sold in the Credit Bubble.

Trying to figure out the aggregate housing price decline of a state as large as California is no easy task. For a state with over 36,000,000 people getting a simple statistic on housing is challenging and requires the ability to look at multiple sources of data. During the height of the housing bubble [...] Related Posts: ■ Foreclosures jump statewide by 40% in California in just one quarter! Welcome to California’s Gold! ■ Even the Harlem Globe Trotters Couldn’t Spin Today’s Housing News! ■ Real Homes of Genius: Today we Salute you Huntington Park. Sold 3 Times in 4 Years. ■ Housing Bloggers Unite: The Housing Blogger Network (HBN) has Started. ■ Think Housing Can’t Go Down Significantly in Southern California?

As it stands, the Housing and Economic Recovery Act of 2008 otherwise known as the housing bailout bill is moving quickly through both the House of Representatives and the Senate. This weekend, the Senate overwhelmingly passed the bill with a 72-13 vote and now heads to the White House for President Bush’s signature even [...] Related Posts: ■ Interview with Senator Government Genius: Discussing the Housing and Economic Recovery Act of 2008 ■ Housing Premonition: When You Knew it in Your Gut That Housing is Overpriced. ■ Selling Mortgage Loans on the Side of the Freeway: The Reckless Bailing out of the US Housing Market by Government Agencies. ■ The Genesis of the Credit Bubble: Advertising, Deception, and $163 Billion in Subprime California Loans Resetting in 1 Year. ■ California Solution for Budget Crisis: Minimum Wage and Laying off People. But Who Will Buy the $500,000 Foreclosures?

/* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language:#0400; mso-fareast-language:#0400; mso-bidi-language:#0400;} You really have to tip your hat to our politicians.  The House approved the biggest bailout in the history of this country although they are trying [...] Related Posts: ■ Housing Bloggers Unite: The Housing Blogger Network (HBN) has Started. ■ Ode to the Housing Market: Learning to Love the Housing Bubble. ■ Real Homes of Genius: Half-Off Sale in Lynwood California and the Distance Theory of Investing. ■ Stage Two of the Mortgage Collapse: $500 Billion in Pay Option ARMs Meet the Piper in 2008 with 60 Percent Being in California. ■ Foreclosed: Predicting Foreclosures in California. How Many Homes will Be Foreclosed in 2008?

I was watching CNBC on Wednesday morning and they were on a Fed watch with a countdown and all other bells and whistles. As the day went along, these talking heads were talking about good earnings here, the resilient American consumer, and all this other pointless Chihuahua yammering to keep people from asking the [...] Related Posts: ■ Two 400+ Point Days in Two-Weeks: Why this is Horrible News for Housing. Volcker and Protecting your Mac. ■ There will be Housing: How we’ve Returned to Selective Market Ignorance. ■ 10 Percent Unemployment in California: Which Counties are Hurting the Most and What it Means for Housing. ■ Bipolar Housing: Lessons from the Great Depression: Part XI. Understanding the Impact of Asset Deflation and Consumer Inflation. ■ The Sham of our Current Unemployment Rate Numbers: Lessons from the Great Depression: Part X. Data Mining.

Unless you’ve been living under a rock and given how bad the housing market is, this may be a reality, the big news making the rounds this week is the housing bailout plan otherwise know as the Housing and Economic Recovery Act of 2008. We can talk about the B-list theatrics with Mozilo shedding [...] Related Posts: ■ Two 400+ Point Days in Two-Weeks: Why this is Horrible News for Housing. Volcker and Protecting your Mac. ■ Real Homes of Genius: Two For One in Compton. Southern California Housing Bubble Hangover. ■ Real Homes of Genius: 675 square foot home in Lynwood California at $425,000?! ■ Housing Contradiction: Home Prices Down = Sales Up. Any Questions? ■ Ross Perot Charts: How I Learned to be a Housing Blogger from Ross Perot.

With housing, there are only two positions in which someone can be. You own or you rent. That is it. The fascinating market dynamics are making people ask whether this is the bottom and should they jump into the market to buy. From the beginning, this question should not be approached [...] Related Posts: ■ Real Homes of Genius: Culver City Pricing Dysfunction! Prices all Over the 405. ■ Real Homes of Genius: Today we Salute Inglewood. Bought in 1970 for $20,000 now selling for $397,400. ■ Real Homes of Genius: Today we Salute Culver City. Flipping Homes in Today’s California Housing Market. ■ Housing Rehab: 2 Step Program - Real Homes of Genius: Today we Salute you Burbank. $626,000 Short Sale. ■ The Rent vs. Buying Dilemma: Mortgages the Southern California Way. 3 Factors to look at: Increase Rental Prices, Housing Price Declines, and Tighter Credit Markets.

I’ve been digging through the 44 page State of the Nation’s Housing report put out by the Joint Center for Housing Studies at Harvard University. The report is chock full of excellent data yet once again they miss on a few of their forecasts. I’ll get to the data in the current [...] Related Posts: ■ How I learned to Love SoCal and Forget the Bubble! ■ Sins of Years Ago Come to Haunt the Housing Market: Foreclosure is a Slow Process in California. ■ Realtor Mantra: Buy Today, buy Tomorrow, buy Yesterday! ■ Tell me the Sales Data: You Can’t Handle the Sales Data! ■ California Examined: The Deep Budget Impact of the Mortgage Crises.