OT: sorry more people should read this. A simply lovely story of the rise and fall of a subprime lender involving writing off an Enzo:

`Deal With Devil' Funded Carrera Crash Before Bust (Update3) - Bloomberg.com

for extra fun, look on youtube for the clip of the subprime fee powered enzo getting written-down very suddenly, and then the reviews on imdb (first the shill ones, then the real ones) of the movie funded by subprime loan fees.

The "Fortress" will be immune --damage will be contained to "Not the Real Bay Area" communities. Nothing to see here people, move along!

I just saw this myself. It actually stated the truth about the increase in the average price, although it was halfway down the article:

"Prices in the core metro markets close to large job centers or the coast are holding up relatively well, while areas far from the core are experiencing the most price erosion."

In other words, housing prices are in decline generally except in a few expensive areas which distort the statistics from the hole.

And those areas "far from the core" where prices are softer are in some cases only a few miles down the road from areas where prices are still strong. Just a matter of time...

Soft landing, Goldilocks, contained, the economy is fundamentally sound...

should be "statistics from the whole." Although it's a hole we're all in Smile.

The Bay Areahas been overprices since nineteen tickety two. And it will be overpriced in 2010, 2020 and 2030. Why people are willing to pay so much to live there is a good question, but they are...

Wile E. Coyote just looked down. YIKES!

Be interesting to see the sales breakout in deciles or the like - likely some material shift in how sales are distributed ('low' end is gone).

Bob Dobbs, notice the 20% price decline in Solano? And talking about price declines, I was just on the phone with one of the top RE agents in San Diego, and she said prices have fallen significantly - but they still are way way too high. It's about to get really ugly.

Best Wishes.

CR: Why do you consider prices adjusting to where they should be "ugly"?

Recent article at CNN:

CNNMoney.com: 404 Page Not Found

Oakland (SF Bay Area) 4th greatest housing value drop in US during last year.

What I see in urban core is moderately stable in high end; severe weakness in low end. Lots of "affordable" homes changed hands in past couple of years; have little idea of ratio of flippers vs. seekers of shelter with marginal credit.

In any event, the "cheaper" neighborhoods are getting cheaper by the day. The higher end does seem to be slowing/reversing. How could it do otherwise if there's nothing to trade up from?

Aheadofthecurve, just a phrase - I think prices adjusting is healthy for housing and the economy - in the longer term - but the adjustment process is ugly for existing homeowners and the economy (in the short term).

Best Wishes.

I take great issue with Data Quick's results. I live in SF and we have seen our houses (located in one of the most desirable areas) decline 10% for one and 32% for the other.

The only sector doing great is the higher end (i.e. 2-10 million range). These sales greatly offset the median to the upside.

This is all smoke and mirrors.

Hey...Just wait till ya'll get like us here in SW Florida. I constantly pull the sales numbers off the counties homepage. Man, it's getting better every month. Heck sales DOUBLED in November.

Went from approx 450 in Oct to 1000(approx) in November. Oh,sorry i forgot to mention that the 100.00 transfers to REO are counted as sales. They just happened to be approx 600 of those sales in November...

December is running the same percentage as November as well...

Chris

CR: Even though I own a home, I consider it primarily a consumer purchase not an investment. So if prices drop, it is like a sale at Macy's, perhaps?

The economy will readjust to more productive endeavours than real estate speculation and it will happen quicker than some think.

Best wishes to you also

Google IPO's stock option vesting schedule ends sometime in 2008. That may finally slow down the upper-end peninsular market.

"Bob Dobbs, notice the 20% price decline in Solano? "

Sure did. I grew up in Solano and still have ties there. Yes, it is ugly up there: a lot of true subprime meltdown action going on among the working classes/new immigrants. And only about 20 miles from Marin County, 20 miles from Berkeley/Oakland, and less than an hour to SF by the daily commute ferry. As outlying areas go, it doesn't lie out that far...

"And talking about price declines, I was just on the phone with one of the top RE agents in San Diego, and she said prices have fallen significantly - but they still are way way too high. It's about to get really ugly.""

Somebody posted an article out of Modesto a few days ago about a foreclosure auction of 1700 houses in Stanislaus; only 17 sold, even though many investors attended and prices on some homes were cut from the 500Ks to the low $300Ks. The unspoken verdict: still too high...

"...sluggish demand kept sales at a two-decade low for the third straight month"

I guess this means the meal du jour for SFBA homedebtors--Ramen--will now be served to local realtors.

Here is a bank owned hose now listed on the mls for 25k. Would make a good rental if it can be bought for 19-20 and a little put into it...Just a small haircut of 50k...

Date \tBook/Page \tSales Codes \tSelling Price
12/1980\tIMPROVED \t$25,000
12/1986\tIMPROVED \t$24,000
4 /1991\tIMPROVED \t$25,000
3 /1995\tIMPROVED \t$16,300
1 /2005 VAC-MULTI \t$83,000
1 /2005 VAC-MULTI \t$100
8 /2007 IMPROVED \t$100

Oh look,a recent sale...Closed in November...

5 /1979\tIMPROVED \t$18,000
3 /1993 IMPROVED \t$100
9 /1997 IMPROVED \t$25,000
3 /2003 IMPROVED \t$35,300
6 /2006 IMPROVED \t$135,000
9 /2007 IMPROVED \t$100
11/2007 IMPROVED \t$42,900

Hey its only a 92k loss on this one!!!

Yes i make copies of this kinda stuff and spread it around work...I'm an ass like that.

Chris

I grew up in Solano and still have ties there. Yes, it is ugly up there

Bob Dobbs, don't worry, we've all made poor fashion choices in the past...does your wife pick your ties now?

I marvel at Realtors'(R) studied ignorance of the geography of price changes.

On the way up, better neighborhoods shot up first; only later were crime dens marketed as "up and coming." The decline is following precisely the same order in reverse. First, you couldn't sell a crack den to a crack whore even if it were made of real crack. Then middling neighborhoods declined. The toniest streets will fall last.

It's just a simple flight to quality, before quality falls, too--but the NAR and their fellow hoodlums are now retreating into "neighborhoodism" as their last, desperate gasp.

There is no neighborhood, no matter how "desirable," that comes with its own dedicated global credit market.

So many in Sonoma County are in total denial. It can't happen here. We're just so special. After all, Luther Burbank said "this is God's chosen spot". Not so sure he would say that today.

I'm just amazed at how many educated people feel that real estate "always goes up", and that if we just hold out for a couple of years, it will all come back, and move forward again. Yah, when wages rise.

Bring on inflation. It's the only way to refloat this boat. Sorry, seniors on pensions.

Lee in Santa Rosa

Markel,

It's special here. Prices will never fall. They aren't making any more land.

"Bob Dobbs, don't worry, we've all made poor fashion choices in the past...does your wife pick your ties now?"

No, I live in Santa Cruz where ties are considered a sign of bondage to the patriachy and everybody wears Hawaiian shirts to business deals and funerals. I'm not kidding about that last part. Read my blog entry about Thanksgiving.

I beat you to the punch, Markel. By one nanosecond.

Lee

Bob Dobbs,

I'm so glad to be out of Santa Cruz now. It's pretty and the weather's nice, but I just couldn't handle the culture, the traffic, the endless sales pitches from drug dealers, the crumbling roads and malfunctioning storm sewers (It's raining, watch geysers come out of the undersized storm drains) and the residents unwillingness to fix or acknowledge any of the area's numerous problems.

I should rephrase that. The natural environment around Santa Cruz is pretty, but the city's fugly.

with a spiffy gold cubic zirconia tie-tack

spiffy indeed.

I almost forgot to mention, in the last few months, there has been a mass exodus of people leaving the Bay Area. The outgoing clearly exceeds the incoming, further compounding the declines.

My very own Santa Clara County is on the verge of going YOY negative for median price. That's despite the fact that the mix of houses is still out-of-whack (with a much bigger slowdown in sales in the lower-priced neighborhoods).

Around the the next bend are the ARM resets and Option ARM recasts, which will start unmasking the Alt-A and Prime homeowner-impostors (see CEO Kenneth Lewis phrase "homeowners in name only").

And don't forget that our much-anticipated highrise condos (in downtown San Jose) will be completed in the next 1-2 years. They've been claiming decent sales so far. Let's see what their cancelation rates look like when it comes time to complete the transactions.

Looking at the DataQuick press release, Santa Clara looks to be the bellweather county. The increases in the medians are in San Mateo Country and San Francisco but the volume is so low in these counties, an increase in the relative percentage of high-end sales could easily be tilting the medians up, obscuring a drop in the middle in teh market.

Because the volume is higher, Santa Clara is probably a better indicator of where the "core" bay area market really is and it the core of the Silicon Valley, job wise. Over the next year, declines showing in the Santa Clara county median is quite likely.

I don't see anybody buying $1M crappy 3 bedroom houses in Moutain View or Sunnyvale while the prices are dropping. A modest 5% drop is $50,000 lost.

"I'm so glad to be out of Santa Cruz now. It's pretty and the weather's nice, but I just couldn't handle the culture, the traffic, the endless sales pitches from drug dealers, the crumbling roads and malfunctioning storm sewers..."

Heh. You must have lived downtown.

Santa Cruz as a community talks the talk, but doesn't walk the walk. High real estate prices have driven out most of the true bohemians and replaced them with lifestyle liberals and wealthy SV types. I'll be curious to see how the town changes in character as real estate prices drop back down again somewhat.

Sorry HARM, your chart is no longer correct. According to the latest figures the East Bay is no longer part of the Bay Area as Alameda County saw significant price declines and as we all know prices can never decline in the real Bay Area. Pretty soon only Russian Hill and certain blocks of Palo Alto will be the real Bay Area.

Seriously though, we should cut the "it can never happen here" crowd a little slack. Prices have been crazy here for a long time and these are people who have spent decades trying to make sense of a real estate market that just refuses to act rationally. Saying "it won't happen here", even if deep down you didn't really believe it, has consistently been the right call. Sure I believe this time it really is different, but it's been a suckers bet to go against Bay Area real estate at any other time in the decade I've lived here.

ultraswank,

Your last sentence is perfect: "...it's been a suckers bet to go against Bay Area real estate at any other time in the decade I've lived here.".

Really, I mean that just sums it up. So many people really look only at the last decade (or two, at most). That's not exactly a very good data sample...it includes one of the largest equities bubbles in history, and then one of the largest world-wide housing bubbles in history. And of course the second bubble was created just in time to stop the fall of asset prices (housing included) from the end of the first bubble. Nevermind that incomes never recovered their lofty heights. Housing prices went "to infinity and beyond!".

Ultraswank,

I live in SF and I am telling you we cannot sell either house for less than 10%-32% off market value from May 07.

The "it won't happen here" mentality is going to be severely debunked.

I almost forgot to mention, in the last few months, there has been a mass exodus of people leaving the Bay Area. The outgoing clearly exceeds the incoming, further compounding the declines.
Growler | Homepage | 12.20.07 - 4:53 pm | #

growler -
i'm surprised to hear this as some of my friends have had to move out of SF to find a closet they could afford to rent. and there is this:

Page not found : The Real Estate Bloggers

which to me suggests demand for (rental) housing is still rising. of course, this does not speak to aggregate population flows.

could you post your source?

Note from friend down in Austin, Texas who is looking for a small house:

no real slippage in prices yet, but stuff is staying on the market for much longer.

Mingalicious,

Just checked out the site. The rental rates posted seem rather cheap compared to craigslist.

The source was SFGATE but I cant seem to find the actual article. FYI.. Many SF Bay residents are moving to Portland (locals call them 'Bay Area Refuges'), TX, and MN.

Lastly, SF will be ground zero for the next phase of defaults. Those with good credit scores, income, etc. yet we're only able to put 10% down and could only afford 3,5,7, YR ARMs will be wiped out.

Not only will their equity be gone but the interest rates for Jumbo lending is vastly more expensive than what it was prior to Aug. 07, thus making refinancing almost impossible.

continued...... TMA, WM, WFC, and C are highly exposed in the Bay Area. While the median price is around 600K, the actual median in SF proper is close to 900K.

TMA is especially exposed to Tenancy In Common ownership structures. This is when a group of people purchase a multi-family building in hopes of converting to condos. Values for TIC buildings are plummeting. The fall out is going to be huge!

Lee parker,i am in sebastopol,and i am still seeing homes in the $1M plus range moving.This is the "Good Stuff" well built homes on acreage.It is taking longer to sell and prices are down,but it moves.Below $1M is aaaahhhh,slow.still twitching,but not dead yet.

Palo Alto and Menlo Park are still moving like its 2005. I'm beginning to wonder if it will ever end.

Palo Alto and Menlo Park are still moving like its 2005.

And my best guess is that they will continue to do so for at least another year or two till the Google, VMare etc millionaires and '100K'aires are done.

100K doesn't get you much. You need at least 200K in the bank and 200K+ in income just to qualify for the tiniest of shacks around here. Its madness and how its still going on is beyond me. There aren't that many stock option millionaires running around.

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