San Diego Housing Bubble News and Analysis

Why should they worry if they can afford the payments. If so, crying over past mis-timed buying decisions is just the road to the madhouse. Hopefully they won't have one of the more insenstive Piggs crowing at them when they buy next door for a song in a few years time and try to rub your friend's nose in it. .

I'm sure they're just trying to put on a good front. Deep down they are probably sick over it.

What they don't know, and what you shouldn't bother explaining (why cause them more pain?) is that taking into account inflation and the value of the dollar, it will likely never reach that "value" again. Ever. It might see the number $600k again in 20 years (5 is laughable), but again that will be far from today's dollars.

And if they really do like living there and can afford it, who cares?

Your friend is trying to justify his stupid decision. That way he doesn't have to admit to himself that he was an idiot.

600K in Murrieta!....ha ha ha..ugh I am choking here..

Ren's post (above) hit the nail squarely on the head.

Many people still believe that as soon as the current foreclosures are sold prices will return to the 2006 levels. Their thinking (I guess) is those are beat up, not comparable foreclosures and are different than my home.

Of course if you can covert the beat up place to a nice home for $50K, wouldn't that person still be happy selling it for $100K more than they paid. Seems like the $600K is quite a while off.

Lets not even touch that foreclosures coming on the market have shown NO signs of slowing down.

They are probably in total shock and are covering their feelings with rationalizations. I think that many people just didn't believe prices would really come down like they have...I didn't. I think some of you know that I bought in Feb 2007 when we moved here from Seattle and just didn't have the market understanding like we do now to have made the decision not to buy (yes, that makes me an FB) Prices were (still are) very high in Seattle so when we moved here we didn't have sticker shock and just accepted the high prices. At the time we didn't realize that there were so many "crazy" loans out there and just believed either people made a high salary or had rolled previous equity to the new home to afford the high prices. When I talk to other people about our house lossing over 100K in value they usually just have the attitude that prices will return within a few years (no more than 5), I wonder if your friends also believe that or are just using that rationalization to soothe their anger. I think it will be a very, very long time before they see 600,000 again for their home.

As long as they weren't planning on it rising in value and refinancing they can just chalk it up as a bad investment, they weren't alone. Where people made the biggest mistakes were those who needed to increase in order to stay.

I have a friend who made a similar decision but they sold in a much more expensive and equally bubbly market, took their profit and paid cash out here. They have lost a large chunk of equity because of the timing but they have checked current prices on their old house and would have lost double had they stayed, plus they don't care, they don't have a mortgage. They could have done better had they sat on the sidelines for two years and reverse flipped but in their minds, they did o.k., I can't really argue with them about that, they could have done better or they could have done worse.

Your freind could also look at it this way, they may have lost 300k so far but they are only exposed another 300k, there are people and places that today have more exposure than that, so it can only get a little worse for them.

My guess would be 10 years before they see 600K again, but I am an optimist at hart.

Maybe they will see somthing in the 400K range again in five but like I said I am an optimist (again just my guess).