Irvine Housing Blog

Thanks for the data.  Good stuff.
——-

Still over $400 per sf for an SFR…  Only a couple of sales below or near the $300 per sf mark.  Some serious WTF buys of small places in the high $400’s to low $500s per sf.

IR,

per redfin:

11 SOLSTICE
IRVINE, CA 92602-2423
Sold For:  $734,700 (07/12/2007)

which is 215.3K (23%) off the peak(950K).
imo, still was overpriced

“Publicity is good. Good publicity is better.”
-P.T. Barnum

Housing Starts May Drop to 12-Year Low: U.S. Economy Preview

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aLStqpDWDanA&refer=home

Party on Wayne!  Party on Garth!

Surprise! Americans Set to Open Wallets This Holiday
http://www.cnbc.com/id/21271391/

Americans plan to spend an average $839 during the holiday season, up 17.6% from last year, the survey says.
...
Much of the economic news in the past few months has focused on the housing industry and, according to CNBC’s survey, an overwhelming 90% of American home owners expect their home process to stay the same or increase over the next 12 months by an average of 3.9%. And, nearly 80% of Americans said they don’t increase their spending based on gains in the price of either their homes or stock portfolios.

Beazer Opens The Door To Litigation

http://www.forbes.com/markets/economy/2007/10/12/beazer-hud-closer-markets-equity-cx_ra_1012markets33.html

The redfin data is picking up the price the investor paid at the foreclosure auction. If you look at the original post I made a comment about it and who bought it. I don’t know how much commission they paid out or if they put any money into but the profit margin wasn’t that great. That’s a lot of risk for that tiny margin.

thanks graphrix

Housing slump affects sales tax collections

http://www.ajc.com/services/content/metro/stories/2007/10/12/taxes_1013_web.html

States across the country, from California to Florida, are facing budget problems for the first time in years because of the slumping housing market and slow sales tax collections.

Earlier this decade, state governments went through their biggest fiscal downturn since the Great Depression, leading to spending cuts and tax increases. In Georgia, for instance, the state cut more than $1 billion in school funding. About 100 local school systems raised their property tax rates, many in response to the state funding cuts. Georgia also increased cigarette taxes to help fill the funding gap.

There are many stories now about unemployed mortgage brokers looking for work, and various comments posted below the stories feeling bad for them.  However, it’s good to have some context before these stories - how much did they make during the boom? (See link below).

Mortgage Brokers Benefit From a Refinancing Boom

http://www.collegejournal.com/salarydata/banking/20030304-hechinger.html

Like many of the nouveau rich, these people blew their fortunes away.

A Pepsi truck driver in his mid 40s that went from 45 to 450K should have stashed enough money in three years to retire.  But nooo… instead off they went buying 700K homes and 200K vacation condos…. this in areas where 700K buy you a real mansion.

Then you got that woman in Manhattan.  I wonder if she’ll move into her horse ranch?

This is to me the most solid argument for bearish short and mid term real estate market , and I’ve not seen a counterargument with evidence for this.

The first time that I read about this was in an interview of a big shot investor/speculator in Barrons magazine, he was afraid of the trillions of dollars of ARM resets and was taking short positions already, this was around summer 2006, at that time there was not a single mention of subprime issues or a credit crunch, but this data is well known in Wall Street, So how come these issues caught the lenders, banks and investment banks by “surprise” since August?