Posted on 04/06/2009 5:01:00 AM PDT by MeneMeneTekelUpharsin
There's is a lot of activity out on the coast that may indicate a reawakening of the housing market there - and across the country.
NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- No state has been harder hit by the housing bust than California. It has piled up more foreclosures and has endured among the worst home-price declines. The median price of a single-family home sold in February was $247,590, down 41% from 12 months earlier, according to the California Association of Realtors (CAR). And home construction in the Golden State has nearly vanished: December housing permits shrank to about a quarter of what they were during the boom years, according to the National Association of Homebuilders.
(Excerpt) Read more at money.cnn.com ...
We're forgetting that southern California is only about a half-day's flight from the major cities in China, and because southern California has a HUGE expatriate Chinese population it also means easier acclimation to the USA, too. (There are a lot of "Chinatowns" scattered all over the Los Angeles Basin.)
It's just too damn bad that everyone, including FReepers, who “said” they were gonna vote for McClintock in 2003 didn't follow through.
Now, with the liberalism & incompetence of RINOld who has poisoned the GOP well so badly, it will be at least a decade before the GOP can get a dogcatcher elected to statewide office in CA!
Same in our area of Florida, but the houses are going really “cheap.” Something like 1/2 the closings are foreclosures.
The people this hurts the most are the ones who have not been negligent but are trying to sell their homes for whatever reasons...foreclosures really depress values.
Not fair, for sure, but that’s life, I guess. The banks who gave the “bad mortgages” in the first place now are unloading them when they go into foreclosure at low, low prices. And there is such a glut of foreclosures that haven’t hit the market yet, I don’t expect prices to turn around anytime soon.
We’re not in bad shape because we bought our house 20 years ago, paid it off, and plan to live in it for a lot longer, but younger folks who have to leave the state for job reasons, etc. are going to get hit hard.
Get back to me when CA home prices reflect what the median income of that area can actually afford to repay.
What HAS happened is foreclosure sales at 40-50% below 2006 prices. Since home/income ratios approached 12x median, and the successful ratio is 3x median, they still have a ways to fall.
Ever hear the term “catching a falling knife” ?
Yeah, of course it has. Most folks who can afford homes in this part of Southern California usually work in the greater Los Angeles or San Diego areas. That is over an hour commute one way. Believe me, they pay in other ways.
Exactly!
Real Estate is regional in market effect.
Home prices in Florida have nothing at all to do with California.
About two hours south of Silicon Valley, prices 2/3 off the bubble top seem to be the sweet spot.
The problem is not Freeper votes, one way or another.
It was (is) the millions of newer anti-business anti-conservative multi-cultural type votes which have increased enormously due to years and years of culture-driven mainstream media promotion of the Dem-lib=good .... RepConservative=bad mythology.
Collectively, we fail to realize how much anti-conservative brainwashing goes on in public schools, and unfortunately in many private schools which should know better.
Even some of the most solid conservatives have fallen into this we-must-be-wrong guilt mentality, and thus are willing to promote this notion that Christian theology and American business is to blame, and that "the government must do something" now, or else.
I know that sounds like same old rhetoric, but I see it manifested on a daily basis as children of good Christian conservative families increasingly go over to the dark side due to the enormous peer pressure from fellow students, teachers, network TV, commercials, and the mainstream media.
I've actually had a 'birds and bees' type talk with my kids and grandkids recently, warning them of the dangers in believing the propaganda that is pushed in their faces each and every day.
Heck, I even find myself falling into the trap of thinking like a liberal. It's maddening, but it happens ...
"Enjoy the "bear-trap" rally on global bourses this spring. But remember, we have only just begun to see the mass lay-offs and hardship caused by this slump. The politicians will act to save their skins. Markets may not like the result.
The MSM has been cheerleading a recovery ever since the CNBC Sentelli outburst. We closely watch specific zip codes in CA where we have or had realestate. When the prices finally catch down to incomes and rental rates..I will let you know. They aren’t there yet. The SP500 Shiller numbers are far better, but CA is only affordable deep in the desert..60 miles or more from a job.
The only recovery is the number of banks starting to really dump their inventory..
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