San Diego Housing Bubble News and Analysis

here is the thing, the smart people already know this and stupid people will just ignore the sign and buy anyway becuase they are stupid and easily swayed by real estate con artists who will feed them some BS about why the sign is wrong.

I did my part - about a month ago I was driving around PB and saw a realtor's cardboard sign that said, "Now is the time to buy" with a phone number. I scratched out the word "now" and replaced it with "later."

Every little bit helps!

What a biatch. Why would you vandalize someone else's property? I hope someone keys your car.

Chrispy,

Messing up someone else's add or billboard is simply wrong. If you want to convey a different message to larger audience, spend some money and put a board up yourself. This is just being mean and irresponsible.

What's more annoying and wrong are the illegally placed, cardboard, black marker written boards that you see on every street corner that I believe Chrispy was talking about. I'd gladly knock one down or black marker one out just to clean up my neighborhood from these annoyances.

Please report any illegaly placed boards to local officials. I don't think I have the authority to judge about legality of a billboard and mess it up or take it off.

Those signs should be banned, promptly removed and thrown away. If you see litter, you pick it put and put it in the trash can.

If you live in and HOA, any real estate sign on HOA property can be picked up and thrown out.

Hehee! This is a good post.

Oh! Also, I'm on Crispy's side. "Buy later" :)

To clarify: the sign was just a piece of cardboard - the type you find in a shirt package - that was hand-lettered in felt-tip marker. It was on a telephone pole, similar to something advertising a garage sale.

Chrispy, My apologies. By the billboard title I had assumed something like a billboard. I personally wouldn't mess around with these signs as I think someone had spent time putting this up. But agree that cardboard signs are pretty much up for this. I would chuckle though I saw the "buy later" sign somewhere :).

"the smart people already know this and stupid people will just ignore the sign"

That's true to some extent. A smart coworker (a relocated new hire) was about to buy a house, and I tried to talk to him out of it. He didn't seem too convinced. The next time I talked to him, he had decided to wait until the fall (this was late Spring 06). But shortly after that, he did some more research and became convinced that it would be really dumb to buy before 2008; so he signed a 2-year lease for a nice, big house.

My point is that some people are smart enough to "get it," but may need some encouragement to get them thinking and researching about this falling market.

Good job Chrispy!! They are not supposed to hang those signs up anyways and you were telling everyone the truth so where is the harm.

My website tracking Inland Empire

Thanks, QC, WH, Will Entertain, and the rest of the acronyms out there...

You're very welcome Crispy. It's like you said, "every little bit helps." You did the right thing.

It's also like "whitesoftheireyes" says in this post. All the industries are colluding together to try and keep this huge ponzi scheme running. Even the government will step in eventually and try to help prevent a crash. They will say they do it to help the FBs and banks from forclosures, but the real reason will be their loss of the huge tax base. Think about it, if (when) housing crashes, then all property taxes will have to be rolled back to the new (real) value of property. The city/state/fed governments are broke in the best of times these last few years. What will they do when they start losing the property taxes, sales taxes, fees, mello roos, ... so on. Always follow the money trail my friends that will tell you the truth. It's the only true path for the powers that be anyway.

So yeah, I'm on your side Crispy and Whitesoftheireyes! All of us little people need to stick together.