Karen: I agree with you…clearly, at a statewide level, CA has done relatively poorly in this real estate downturn and the healthiest regions tend to be in the middle of the country

EricTyson Says:

September 19th, 2009 at 12:13 pm
Effective Demand – the most desirable neighborhoods in SF and Orange County. The Victorian I owned in SF years ago just resold for a higher price than it sold for several years earlier.
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Example: My late sister’s 2br/2bth condo in Irvine (Woodbridge) sold for 599k (termed a fixer-upper) in Feb of ’06. Present value is 468k.
The first buyer walked from a 10k down for reasons that were never explained.

As always, your mileage may vary……

They grossly overpriced their properties for today’s market because they saw people getting those kinds of prices in the housing bubble market of onlyt a few years ago — or themselves bought grossly overpriced properties only a few years ago.

I saw the same thing in Boston during the housing market trough of the early 1990s after the Northeast housing bubble of the 1980s had burst. A lot of owners stubbornly held on to unrealistically high asking prices for years on end. They themselves had paid unrealistically high prices during the 1980s bubble, and they just could not believe they weren’t going to get their money back.

That list you posted of urban areas where prices are holding steady — nearly all the urban areas on that list are either in the Midwest or in Texas, neither of which went through the recent crazed housing bubble. Everybody knows that. That list doesn’t prove a thing about California or the other areas that did go through a crazed bubble, and where prices won’t be recovering any year soon.

The areas that did go through a bubble, where housing prices will probably go lower and stay down for a very long time, those are the big population areas of the US. So they will have a much bigger depressive effect on the economy in coming years than all those small, sensible, bubble-free areas in the Midwest.

w/this: “I also think your comments are damaging your reputation.”

as the, now, reviled and, egregiously excoriated hose-bag, Ayn Rand, might advise: “you may want to “check your premises”..

http://www.thefreedictionary.com/egregious
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/excoriate

If Sen. Isakson (R), Georgia, (and formally a real estate professional) is successful in having the tax credit increased from $8000 to $15,000 (almost double!) and expanded to all homeowners (not just first-time!).

If taxpayer monies go to real estate investment its free enterprise but if it goes to health care its socialism? I’ve got to go back and reread this Repub capitalist fiscal conservatism stuff; I must have missed that chapter.

“About a third of all home sales are foreclosures, and as foreclosures increase with the moratoriums expiring values will fall.”

Moratoriums. There you go.

If Sen. Isakson (R), Georgia, (and formally a real estate professional) is successful in having the tax credit increased from $8000 to $15,000 (almost double!) and expanded to all homeowners (not just first-time!).

If taxpayer monies go to real estate investment its free enterprise but if it goes to health care its socialism? I’ve got to go back and reread this Republican capitalist fiscal conservatism stuff; I must have missed that chapter.