Southern California Real Estate Bubble Crash Blog

For some time, I has been difficult for me to keep all of my priorities and keep fresh content up on my site.  While the site is a great place to find aggregated housing and bubble news and commentary from other sites, I like to keep the information coming here as much as possible.

As such, I have asked a friend of mine, Brad Davidson of Help-U-Buy realty to join me as a blogger on the site.

Bear in mind that this was no easy decision.  Brad and I don’t share the same opinions, not in the least.  In fact, we have had very different opinions about what is going on in the local real estate market.  This, I think, however will allow you to have a different opinion about what is going on the local markets.  However, Brad brings a lot of depth to the discussion about what is going on in the immediate market.  He is a licensed real estate professional, and has what I think is a model of the future of real estate sales.

Please be sure to read his analysis when it is presented, since it is a boots-on-the ground reference to the local goings-on in the OC real estate world.

Besides, if he really sucks, I can just revoke his blogging privelidges.  Welcome Brad when he makes his first post.

If you know any flippers in trouble in Orange County, Flip This House wants to know about them. Yes, you know… that show. I think it’ll be interesting to see if there are any great stories that come out of them. Basically, as a blogger, I can stand back and watch the fireworks from a distance without getting my hands dirty, a kind of sanitized schadenfreude that comes with not getting involved.

However, if you know someone who tried to flip in Orange County and couldn’t pull it off, or just is having a hard time, Brandy from Flip This House wants to hear from you. Write to her at the following address: realestatenightmares(at)gmail.com Of course, I get no part of this other than the sick satisfaction of seeing the final product like other train-wreck watchers out there. Besides, the way I feel about it is that I warned people publicly as early as April 2005 that flipping was a dangerous sport, so if you falldowngetbooboo, I don’t have any sympathy for you. Pound sand.

On the other hand, if you get some kind of sick pleasure out of watching other people financially crash and burn after they’ve been warned that they’re playing with fire… well, you’re my kind of people.

USA Today had a very interesting roundtable discussion of housing.  There were some very interesting (and wrong) opinions put forth, however I was more than delighted at some of the quotes of Lawrence Yun’s (Chief Economist of the National Association of Realtors), and successor to the discredited David Lereah (Pronounced LI-AR).

Here are some truly astounding quotes he gave to USA Today:

Lawrence Yun: Consumers need to find out what is going on at the local level and not necessarily take national headline numbers as a point of reference. Sellers tend to be more stubborn in facing the reality of the market, so people who really need to sell need to come down on prices, given the high inventory and seller competition.

and

Yun: If home equity is used for investment — including college education — then returns will be worth it. If home-equity loans are used for frivolous spending, then consumers are just eating away their retirement savings and will regret it later.

and

Yun: The Fed should stop the rate cuts. If inflation gets out of the bottle, it will introduce a host of new problems.

Of course the usual crap is there:  2008 second-half better than first-half… we’ve turned a corner… buyers should get in now… etc.   However, this is just a regurgitation of 2006 and 2007 party lines, it’s a wash, rinse, repeat cycle that the NAR spins every year, but I suspect that the general perception of the group as a self-serving fear-mongering team that uses hard-sell tactics to bully people into buying homes is getting to the general psyche there.  I wouldn’t be surprised to see their comments about homeownership soften in coming years.  I would at least hope so, and if they don’t do it themselves, we perhaps need some additional regulation of the real estate group.  Once we see real estate as an investment, and no longer as a cost-minimization plan, we need to treat it as such.