LA Times: Slowdown could "settle in for a stay" - buyer says he doesn't want "to be the one to overpay"
Southern California bubble watcher Annette Haddad at the LA Times reports in a June 21 story that the home sales slowdown could linger for a while. However, economic and market forecasters, as well as the media, still won't even entertain the idea that a "slowdown" could slip into a "crash", or that it could aggravate the possibility of a severe recession.
The median home price in Southern California in May was only up 6.4% YOY, which is the smallest YOY gain since July 2000. Notice in the article that home prices are still viewed in terms of gains, as in, "how much or how little", not whether home values can actually decline. It'll be interesting to see what the mood is a year from now.
Even the UCLA Anderson School of Business is forecasting "slower growth" for the regional economy, but not a recession.
Realtors say that speculators have vanished, which has taken the edge off the market and caused demand to shrink. They view the market as "more normalized".
Orange County posted the biggest YOY decline in May sales, 31.6%.
posted by bearmaster at 8:32 AM
1 Comments:
I entirely agree with you, the newspaper articles are useful for giving some numbers. But in terms of getting information out of them that helps somebody be proactive, forget it. Newspapers tell the crowd what they want to hear at the moment. And right now that means placating the crowd with assurances that things will be OK over time. My own philosophy is, by the time the bad news hits the front page of the newspaper, it's too late to fix the problem.
And you don't have to be a rocket to be able to see that! ;) Heck, if Isaac Newton got caught in the South Sea Bubble then any brainy type can get caught in a bubble.
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