Posted on 09/25/2006 8:41:42 AM PDT by GodGunsGuts
Sep 20, 2006
4 Major California Home Markets See Drop In Prices
(AP) LOS ANGELES A real estate research firm says the median price of a California home increased last month at the slowest annual rate in nine years.
Four counties actually saw price declines. Among the largest real estate markets, according to DataQuick Information Systems, the steepest drop was 6.7 percent in San Mateo County. Other decreases were seen in Marin County (2.3 percent), San Diego County (2.2 percent) and Alameda County (1.5 percent).
Appreciation in Sonoma, Santa Clara, San Francisco and Contra Costa counties was essentially flat.
The statewide median price was $472,000 in August, a 3.5 percent hike over the year-ago period. It was the slowest increase since June 1997, when statewide home prices rose just 2.8 percent.
(© 2006 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.)
Stating that he is always predicting gloom would tend to invalidate any predictive value of his arguments.
Things are so bad here in LA that the illegals are living three families to a house now.
Six years.
Why would nice weather, illegals overrunning the country and earthquakes be worth half a million in cash?
earthquakes in California haven't killed nearly as many people as the weather in most other states. We're closer to illegal's entry but the problem is no worse than many other states. The illegals are moving north and east also.
So when you toss out weather and illegals as a serious problem only experienced in California then weather must be the reason that our state is so attractive. 10 months out of the year I have breakfast on my outdoor patio, wear shorts and short sleeves. My patio door and windows are often open as well during the 10 months. The two hot months are spent between my pool and air conditioned home.
California is heaven. Whereever you live you are close to desert, mountains, ocean, tropical cliimates, woods, swimming, skiing, hiking and boating.
Prop 13, thank God, was passed by voters preventing politicians from robbing us blind through property taxes.
The only terrible thing about California are left wing nuts and our state legislators.
True.
However, do the math:
House in Ohio - $135,000
Winter Coat - $65
Gas Bill - $600 for the winter
Snow Shovel - $14
House in Cali - $472,000
Hmmm.
That's one of the few upsides to a potential housing bust and recession...It will reduce the demand for illegals long enough for us to get that wall built!
They've always done that...even here in Ohio. A friend of mine lived in a one bedroom apartment. The apartment next to him was leased by a Mexican guy, who was legal, but he had 12 of his illegal family members living there with him, must have been strewn all over the 500 square foot apartment on sleeping bags.
These reductions listed averaged $40,000, but several were higher, with one reduction of $100,000.
I hope that the people who drove up prices by speculating for a quick buck are the ones who will get hurt the most. I have no sympathy for them. Let their properties sit there, rot and depreciate. When they're ready to go bust I'll be the first one there offering them 50 cents on the dollar and giving them my biggest and worst smirk.
What goes around comes around.
I dunno...I was talking with some people that were trying to rent their house...and they pointed next door and there is a house with a remodeled other house in the back, and they said 12 people live next door. Once prospective renters see that, they leave.
Things are so bad here in LA that the illegals are living three families to a house now.
What's new about that? Asians and Mexicans often gang up and pool their resources and living conditions. That's why many are able to finally break out of poverty and buy their own place eventually and go on to a better life style.
He hasn't always predicted doom. He just thinks we are currently in the midst of a bear market rally within an overall bear market cycle. He believes in booms and busts just like the next guy.
Sure.
And both are excellent reasons to BUY GOLD.
Do you suppose it matters?
Bizarre, fantastical goldbug talking points do not cause me wrath, though they do make me laugh.
Like I said, in a deep recession/depression, reallocating five to ten percent of your portfolio into gold will most likely make up for the losses you will experience in most or all of your other investments. It's called insurance.
The Hoover administration and the Federal Reserve Board also contained several so-called “liquidationists.” These individuals basically believed that economic agents should be forced to re-arrange their spending proclivities and alter their alleged profligate use of resources. If it took mass bankruptcies to produce this result and wipe the slate clean so that everyone could have a fresh start, then so be it. The liquidationists viewed the events of the Depression as an economic penance for the speculative excesses of the 1920s. Thus, the Depression was the price that was being paid for the misdeeds of the previous decade. This is perhaps best exemplified in the well-known quotation of Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon, who advised President Hoover to “Liquidate labor, liquidate stocks, liquidate the farmers, liquidate real estate.” Mellon continued, “It will purge the rottenness out of the system. High costs of living and high living will come down. People will work harder, live a more moral life. Values will be adjusted, and enterprising people will pick up the wrecks from less competent people” (Hoover, 1952). Hoover apparently followed this advice as the Depression wore on. He continued to reassure the public that if the principles of orthodox finance were faithfully followed, recovery would surely be the result.
It's called sales commissions.
Why? Demand for gold will go down, and in a depression the value of real assets goes down. You's be better off investing in fiat dollars.
I know you were being scarcastic and I fully appreciate that often market downturns are protrayed as the end of the world but...
However I do see any RE market downturn as one having a ripple effect on the economy. Oh, there won't be all that many foreclosures, leaders HATE to foreclose and they'll probably renegotiate some of the more outrageous loans, probably something with a ten year baloon payment, stuff like that.
However there is a trickle down if the sale of new homes declines as pointed out by someone else earlier in this thread.
For that reason I have lightened up on equities over the last several months and I have loaded up on bonds. I think the bond market is close to overbought, it's betting way too much on a hard rather than soft landing and a lowering of Fed rates next year and while I'm not solid in the hard landing camp I'm leaning in that direction.
Of course I could be totally wrong, take anything I have to say with a grain of salt. Okay, a pound of salt, but the point is that inside of the hysterical wording may lie some insight into the market, which can be profitable. No, the world isn't coming to an end, but I would rather have been long on bonds vs. say, home builders over the last three months and, until something changes, probably the next three months.
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