San Diego Housing Bubble News and Analysis

Translation: You guys are stupid and worthless and if you want me to grace you with my presence get me this information.

I can't really tell which is greater your ignorance or arrogance.

Score: arraya 1 sundevil 0

Nest up for the piggs JWM....

sdsundevil, you stated that "I have always failed to see the purpose of this site as it has predicted a fall in housing prices since '03 I believe. Well, it took 3 years, but things eventually got there."

Where to begin... First of all, the purpose of this site is to discuss SD (and elsewhere) housing. Good, bad and other. I thought that was obvious. Logically, given its nature, most of the people here are housing bears to some degree or other. Yes, it took another two years ('03 to '05) for prices to level off and begin to fall. Likewise, many stock market bears were complaining about the Nasdaq in '97... it took another three years for valuations to start falling. Does that mean the early bears were wrong? Does it mean that their viewpoint was invalid? Does it mean that they were to be ignored? I think you see my point. Your argument here is a version of the Straw Man Fallacy.

Rents have been discussed here on many threads. Your statement, "I have always stated that rents never go down" is most unfortunate because it's 100% incorrect. And to read this statement should logically make one question the validity of anything else you have to say, fairly or unfairly. In fact during the early 90s SD rents did fall - I can't remember the peak-to-trough number (Rich, you know this number) - but I think I recall it being in the mid-single digit percentage range (maybe 4%-6%). Far less than house prices fell, to be sure, but they fell nonetheless.

Regarding the use of "bubble" and "bursting" this is all a matter of semantics. I could argue that prices falling by 20% over a 2-3 year period is a bursting and you could argue that it's not. This is a tomato/tomahto issue. It's probably not worth discussing. I will say this however... if you talk to the average person who bought a house in 2005 for $500K and asked them 3 years later after their house was appraised at $420K whether or not they felt a "bubble had burst" I'm going to bet they would say, "yes."

I have made tens of thousands of dollars using information gleamed from this site. In addition, I've learned a lot about housing, mortgages, foreclosures, investing, renting, HOAs, NODs, NOTs, REOs, HELOCs, taxes, and the cyclical nature of real estate. Zip code specific areas are discussed FREQUENTLY and tables of rent, sales, prices, you name it are posted regularly. People even post stock ticker symbols for which I am eternally grateful.

I've also learned that irrational people who say things like "we are not in a bubble" or "rents never go down" cause a lot of unpredictable behavior on all markets. Forgive me if I sound slightly hostile, but I promise I have done my best to not say things like "you're a friggin' idiot" or "brainless buffoons like you got us into this mess".

If all you've learned form this site is "we are in a correction" then you have not read enough or you've ignored what you've read because you're in denial and nothing anyone says can convince you otherwise.

There is an entire blog on 4S Ranch, just search for it and read it, lazy.

Uh, Carnac....(sdsundevil)..........If you really believe that this is not a bubble beginning to burst and is just a simple market correction................you need to quit thinking so much and start reading more facts about what's really happening. Prices will fall much further over the next four to six years and if you don't understand why, there is no reason to explain it to you.

Wow,

I'm going to have to step out of my nice shell for a minute that I've been trying to fit.

IF YOU DON'T LIKE THIS FREE SITE THAT RICH T. GENEROUSLY SUPPORTS EITHER

1) GO AWAY

2) OFFER TO ADD CONTENT(USEFUL) CONTENT TO IT FOR FREE

I don't think Rich's makes significant income from this FREE site. and Some folks DO post useful information here (unfortunately, I'm not one of them).

BTW, did I mention this is a FREE site?

FREE FREE FREE FREEE FREEE FREE FREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

note to self: I've been frantically trying to put a webcrawler together that agregates all bankowned properties from different websites, but like so many others here, I have a regular day job too, with possibly the exception of Rustico, which has the means to contract everything out to everyone else :).

You're starting to sound like a union member. You want something for doing nothing. 

----- Sour grapes for everyone!

I've thought for some time it would be cool to have a spreadsheet somehow hosted on this site, or somewhere else with a link here that would have a lot of the pertinent data we all care about: median prices, prices/sqare foot, NOD's/NOT's, average mortgage rates, etc.

I'm ambitious enough to set a format up with the data suggestions of others. I'm not ambitous enough to populate it by myself.

If there was a quorum that would volunteer to help populate such a thing, and possibly and idea on how it could be hosted and edited like an excel wiki, I'd be game to do a little work.

Another idea would be a wiki style page with links to good data sources: foreclosure forum, fed reserve data, bankrate.com, etc.

Stan

CDMA ENG...

By the name... SD Sundevil... I am assuming this is another fine alumni of ASU. Him and Poway Seller make want to stick my degree in the mail to ASU with no return address.

What the heck...

C.E.

CDMA ENG: Hey, I've been to some great parties at ASU! Be proud of your alma mater. Hell, I went to SDSU, and constantly have to put up with my buddies who matriculated at Stanford and Bezerkley demeaning my fine CalState education.

As far as SD Sundevil goes: We are looking at the largest credit bubble in financial history. His (or her) referring to it as a housing bubble does indeed underscore his (or her) ignorance as the housing bubble is simply one component of the larger credit bubble driven by years of the Fed's excessively loose monetary policy.

Anyone who lacks even a passing familiarity with basic Econ101 type principles shouldn't be bloviating about this site's inability to properly call the bust.

SD Sundevil: Next time you are at Barnes & Noble picking up your copy of the Utne Reader, add The Economist, The Financial Times and a Wall Street Journal to your reading selection. Bring a dictionary for the hard words and spend a weekend educating yourself.

Get back to us following.

So let me just see if I've got all this...

You open up by making two provably wrong statements, that this site was started in 2003 and that price declines didn't happen until 3 years after they were predicted here. In fact the site was started in spring of 2004. The Case-Shiller HPI peaked the following year, although by spring 2004 the bulk of the price increases were behind us, and in terms of euphoric sentiment and panic buying the market was already at or past its peak. At the time, sentiment towards housing was ubiquitously bullish and the purpose of this site -- since you are apparently having trouble figuring it out -- was (and still is) to provide some rational analysis of the market to counter all the cheerleading from the legions of housing bubble apologists.

You then go on to insult me and everyone who posts here by saying "It doesn't take much to predict such things." (I somehow doubt that you predicted anything of the sort back in 2004).

Then you say something else provably wrong, that rents never decline. As davelj pointed out, they did decline here in the 1990s -- a fact that you could easily verify yourself if you cared to.

Then, you attempt some tortured logic which as far as I can tell ends up with the ridiculous assertion that because prices didn't crash in the space of a few weeks, there was never a bubble.

Somewhere in there among three falsehoods, an insult, and the most inept re-definition of "bubble" that I've ever heard, you to suggest a number of labor intensive data collection tasks that you apparently think that I -- the guy you just insulted -- should undertake because, despite their apparent importance, you are insufficiently motivated to do them yourself.

Good luck with all that.

I don't think he'll be back.

wow looks like I missed some fun today...

sdsundevil this is a blog....it is for people to have fun, sound off... speak their minds... bitch and moan... and call each other out. pretty much all of the factual stats you asked for can be found in a matter of seconds... all you have to do is look for it...

as for predictions... i think a few things will happen... the sun will come up tomorrow... and the broncos will hand the chargers their fifth loss of the season AND I believe they will cover.

how is that?

ps - take the over in the steelers game. now go make some money.

SD Realtor

Allan I think Temeculaguy went to SDSU too. He is also a Raider's fan. You two have a lot in common.

Since this thread is so jacked anyway, I'm going to hijack it and talk about football. (Sorry Rich, I know you don't like people hijacking threads).

Ok, I like the Raiders, especially when they moved to L.A. BUT, can some raider fan explain to me why

1) When the Raiders lose, Raiders fans riot

2) When the Raiders win, Raiders  fans riot

I mean, it was frickin scary when I was in Oakland for a few games in the past.

Sorry missed the criteria ..not a Raider's fan(neither is Temeculaguy)

Yet another thing this site needs is an IP ban on every arrogant dweeb that decides to blast the site.

Since when does the site require a purpose other than just to be? Tell me, what purpose does MySpace have? Or CNN? Or the Universe, for that matter?

Furthermore, a bubble is not defined by a burst. If it did then you would not know you had a bubble until it burst. Do you not know a brick wall until you hit it? Maybe you don't, or perhaps you didn't, which would explain a few things.

The bubble most definitely exists, we are simply experiencing a slow leak, which will eventually spread to a giant sucking sound.

sdsundevil, thanks for the amuzing post, it is a most welcome hiatus from all the charts, data, reports, and intellectual arguments from CIOs, Realtors, appraisals, economists, and other fine folk that regularily post to the site. /sarcasm off

The initial definition of a bubble is any pricing trend that exceeds the normal range of increases by more than one magnitude. Prior to earlier this year, the anti-bubble crowd always completely denied there even was a bubble or that there would ever be a "correction" of any type - it was the New Paradigm. Then when that didn't pan out they backed down and said it would be a Soft Landing with a very mild correction of 5% or 8% soon to be followed by another round of increases. Then when it became obvious that wasn't going to happen they just gave up and acknowledged that things are bad, getting worse and there's no end in sight. If you want to talk about a group who was completely wrong to begin with and compounded their ignorance with their arrogance I suggest you look elsewhere 'cause this ain't where all that occurred.

Given the illiquidity of real estate and the notoriously slow pace of trends in RE, I think what we've seen so far definitely qualifies as a bursting bubble. Moreover, if anyone thinks the damage is limited to some new home projects they're completely out of the loop. The damage is worse in a lot of the older neighborhoods, and not just by a little bit.

Another thing our OP missed was that we didn't really get involved in saying when it would happen, and at any rate the timing wasn't the important part anyway. This site was always about how overextended the market was relative to the historical trends, how it got that way, and how the markets would take away virtually all of the gains when those enabling factors reversed. A reverse, by the way, that NAR and the permabulls originally said would never come. Ever.

If you want to point the "gotcha" finger at a group who backed the wrong horse, it ain't gonna be us.

In Feb 2005 I was very close to signing myself and my family into a deadly toxic $700K 3/27 ARM, when a friend sent me a link to this website. Reading Mr. Toscano's excellent data-backed analysis opened my eyes and literally saved me from a nice six-digit loss. I am not exaggerating, this site is the reason I backed out. So personally for me piggington.com proved to be ten times more useful than the rest of the Internet combined.

The OP has got to be a troll. (At best)

eccen in esc

This website and its generous contributors have saved me from finanical ruin by keeping me from buying a house in this market. Love you all. And love all those defensive posts against the sundevil.

CDMA ENG...

Rich,

I am glad you responded to the thread it lets me know that you are out there lurking and reading these things.

A friend at work turned me on to this site. I believe he gave you the motto. I can not tell you how much more I have learned from this site and the other linked blogs in addition to some of the thought positive (and sometimes negative) feedback listed on the site.

This is just a personal Thank You from me.

This site is a good substitute for ECON 101 that I slept through at ASU.

Again, Thanks.

C.E.

I have been on this site for a couple of years and I have never seen Rich post on a thread. Man, while I don't think sdsun will be back he has the auspicious achievement of getting Rich fired up enough to post.

FLU: Why do Raiders fans riot (regardless of outcome)? Because they're Raiders fans! Kind of a "cogito ergo sum" sorta thing.

I remember going to Raiders - Steelers games during the 1970s with my dad and they had Oakland PD outside of the Oakland Coliseum in riot gear, just in case.

Bear in mind, we also used to go to 49er games, too, and it was night and day. There were maybe a sum total 8,000 fans at Candlestick (no, it ain't anything other than "the Stick" and never will be), and they were known as the "49er Faithful (pre- Bill Walsh and Joe Montana days). 49er fans are a lot like Charger fans (yeah, this is a dig here), in that they like to sport their colors when winning. Raider fans stay with The Nation through good times and bad (more of the latter lately).

Hi all -- I am now able to post from time to time whereas it wasn't so feasible before (details are in this thread http://piggington.com/site_content_and_t... if you are interested).

I do lurk on the forums though I definitely do not have time to read everything so it's hit or miss whether I see a given topic.

In his brilliant (as usual) reply, Bugs brought up a point that I always think about when I hear these financial pundits making their predictions: if someone didn't see something coming in the first place, why would you expect them to know when it will end?

Thanks to everyone who has offered kind words and personal stories. (I had to laugh at the "ten times more useful than the rest of the Internet combined" line -- what about The Onion? ;-) I am very gratified that the site was able to help some people by offering an alternative view to the RE permabull misinformation onslaught that dominated the conversation for much of the last few years.

On that note, the purpose of this site is so blindingly obvious that people are probably right that the OP is a troll. I don't see how it could be otherwise. So good job, troll -- you fished a bunch of us into wasting our time responding to your nonsense.

My wife and I are moving on Monday and she will beat me if I spend much more time on site this weekend, so I will most probably check out of this thread at this point. Thanks again to all for their kind words.

Have a great weekend, everyone. (Even the troll).

Rich

More Cowbell, I need More Cowbell. Sundevil is who we thought he was, he poked the cats then left the room. I didn't see any responses from him/her so all this post really did was affirm our common beliefs and give us someone to beat up collectively, nothing galvanizes a team more than a bench clearing brawl.

Thanks for remembering Rustico, I am not a raider fan but I am a fan of good football and good coaching and I like what Lane Kiffin is doing with the raiders (so does the rest of the country, his approval rating is 96% compared to Norv's 8%). I am suprised at everyone's memory, yes I attended SDSU with Allan and yes I slept through my econ classes, but what personal story do I have to defend this site apart from no longer needing real friends since my piggy friends are way cooler? This site gave me the strength and knowledge to postpone my re-entry into the housing market on two occasions in the last year, both times would have been a bad idea in retrospect. Having shifted some of my allocated daily internet time away from sports, internet dating and porn to this site I have saved about 100k in my potential housing price, so for that I thank all those who collectively contribute to my knowledge, trolls included.

My cockles....

not my mussels...

Alive, alive oh!

It warms my heart to see the way people defended Don Toscano.
Indeed this site is free and it is a educational tool for a layperson such as myself who is trying to learn about some economics so as to make a SMART move once buying the house is the main issue in my soon to be marriage. I am still in the process of using all the information on this site, absorbing it and the knowledge of the various posters.

Let the troll soak in his or her own bile...

ciao

Carlos

ps- "Having shifted some of my allocated daily internet time away from sports, internet dating and porn to this site"

me too!! jajajajajaja

Temeculaguy, take this as a fun poke at a couple of us. I think we should have icons that indicate the number of drinks we have had. I think Rich should get to work on that right away.

Problem,it would be embarassing to have all know that I am abstinent,from drinking...most of the time ;).

Sorry Rustico, but I'm taking somewhat of a sabbatical for the time being as I have a lot of other things going on right now such as little Jwm in SD due in December. I'm in LA this weekend for a Family function so I've got limited time to post and certainly won't waste my venom on this clown.

Congratulations on the baby. It is a fantastic experience INHO. This if the first I take it?

Also, notice that I never engage these ingrates, except with a short quip now and then.

Best wishes to your growing family.

Yes, it's our first...