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?

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.

Predicting future prices is a dangerous game. Trying to predict peak prices during a mania is like predicting the future behavior of an insane person. By definition their nature is not predictable and thus trying to determine what they’ll do tomorrow may be a fruitless exercise. Yet now that we are slowly [...] Related Posts: ■ How Many People Overpaid for Their Home in Los Angeles County? Trying to get a Raw Number of Households Underwater. ■ Housing Contradiction: Home Prices Down = Sales Up. Any Questions? ■ There will be Housing: How we’ve Returned to Selective Market Ignorance. ■ The Abyss is Deep: The Housing Abyss is Deep: 4 Major Reasons Why Housing in Southern California is Nowhere Near a Bottom. ■ The Quest for Accurate Housing Prices: Three Counties and Multiple Prices.

I was having a conversation with someone last week regarding his home equity line being shut down. He was rather distraught and frustrated by the sudden move of the lender to close off his line due to market conditions here in California. “How can they do that? They have no right to [...] Related Posts: ■ Superstars of Housing Love: The Sheriff Deputy Evicting People who Default. ■ Real Buyers of Genius: Another $20,000 a year person takes on a $600,000 mortgage. ■ $640 Billion in Sub-prime Loans Originated. $386 Billion in Alt-A Loans Originated. $1.026 Trillion in Loans at Risk? Priceless. ■ Housing Bloggers Unite: The Housing Blogger Network (HBN) has Started. ■ About

The bigger they are, the harder they fall. That mantra is now being witnessed first hand by many prime areas of Los Angeles County. Luxury properties have a very specific and niche based market. They cater to a very unique audience that usually resides outside the confines of the average [...] Related Posts: ■ Real Homes of Genius: Today we Salute you Beverly Hills. When the 90210 Simply Isn’t Enough. ■ How Many People Overpaid for Their Home in Los Angeles County? Trying to get a Raw Number of Households Underwater. ■ Foreclosures jump statewide by 40% in California in just one quarter! Welcome to California’s Gold! ■ This Housing Mess is Getting Ugly and Your Face Shows it. Unintended Consequences of Lost Home Equity. ■ Real County of Genius: Los Angeles County Reaches Another Record: $540,000 Median Price. 3 Reasons why this Number is a Fabrication.

I think the best way to discuss the “reemergence” of the credit crisis is to remember a childhood story. Remember that time your family was throwing a party and you were concerned about crazy grandma going off on her usual rants? You thought carefully about what you were going to do since you [...] Related Posts: ■ Two Faces of Housing Panic: Schadenfreude and the Lender of Last Resort. ■ The Sham of our Current Unemployment Rate Numbers: Lessons from the Great Depression: Part X. Data Mining. ■ Manias, Panics, and Crashes: 2007 First Quarter All-Stars – Foreclosures, Subprime, and Politics. Five Characteristics of a Housing Bubble. ■ A Bubble That Broke the World: Lessons from the Great Depression Part IX. When Credit is Debt. ■ Just Because you Crawl Today, Doesn’t Mean you Won’t Walk Away Tomorrow from a Home: The Next Chapter in the Foreclosure Crisis.

Los Angeles County has witnessed every facet of the housing bubble. From historically lower priced areas such as Compton having homes sell at $500,000 to higher priced areas like Beverly Hills seeing homes sell in the multi-millions. We also were at the vanguard of interest only, option ARM, and other exotic mortgages [...] Related Posts: ■ Living Large on $25,000 a Year in Southern California. ■ Double Bubble: California Compared to the United States. Vacancy Rates up Homeownership Down. ■ Southern California Housing Numbers Exposed: The Bottom Falls out of the Housing Market, Again. ■ The Genesis of the Credit Bubble: Advertising, Deception, and $163 Billion in Subprime California Loans Resetting in 1 Year. ■ Are you a Debt Slave?