San Diego Housing Bubble News and Analysis

For all the commenters who think a real recession leads to a complete breakdown in society, I have a suggestion: Become better acquainted with history. This country has lived through many recessions much worse than this one is shaping up to be. And there were complaints, elections lost, new laws, lost and new careers and fortunes..... Life went on. Life will go on.

If you love living in California, then stay there. Take advantage of the opportunity to move to a nicer area. Coins, and events, always have two sides.

PR: Your a Pollyanna - the US has not been through "many" recessions much worse than this one - a few perhaps but not many...

I say buy an RV, if things really do get bad drive to a place where they aren't so bad (probably Utah and parts of Nevada, eastern California).

And if things don't get bad - use it for year round vacations.

Look at the bailout plan. It basically takes care of the very low end and high end of society. That way riots are kept to a minimum and the very wealthy get made whole from the crashing economy. The middle, OTOH, will get severly reduced in size and std of living.

patientrenter-

you are just whistling past the graveyard if you believe the words you have written here tonight.

sadly, this "recession" has all the feel of the endgame for the United States of America

Fair enough. Then you'll find it impossible to refuse my offer to buy, for $1000 cash, all your financial assets. From your perspective, they will have no future value in the Mad Max world we'll be entering soon.

Hi Matt

As I have posted a few times, my wife is pretty pro Texas. I do not have alot of knowledge about the state but the couple of times that I have been there I have experienced the following... hot and humid, extreme flatness...on the flip side, the state seems to be well run and the people are pretty friendly. The state is by no means immune from the downturn but the economy there does seem to be a bit better then here and the schools are much better. Now I am not sure about this but I think it is the only state in the union with a right of secession or something like that. Someone can correct me on that because I honestly don't know what I am talking about but my wife is always bringing that up.

If you want to really talk extreme you may want to consider converting (or maybe your faith already is) mormon. I believe that people of this faith are very well positioned to survive a more cataclysmic change in or society should it occur. For all the talk on this board about people hoarding gold, buying a shotgun to protect your home, and such, if the sheeyat really hits the fan and the fabric does fall apart, I feel that only the most well organized LARGE groups will do okay. Smaller more survivalist types who have literally sold out and bought land in remote rural areas and banded together have a chance. However for someone to think they will hole up in thier home in Clairemont with a Honda generator and a shotgun eating cheerios and macaroni and cheese... I just don't see it happening.

A few nights ago, on one of the many channels, I found myself watching a gang related show. It was interesting as it was studing gang related issues in the New Orleans area, specifically after Katrina. I'll keep this story short because we imagine what quality of folk remained behind (aka. not evacuated....so the sample is skewed). However, a study showed that society broke down within about 4-5 days, and survival kicked in. The interesting conclusion that the crowds in the stadion (Dome) and the highway bridges were valuing 2 things as currency: (1)Water and (2) dried bullets

Hey teats,

I'll give you $1250. Offer expires midnight tonight.

Wow! I had no idea we had a "Lord of the Flies" area existing right here in the US! We no longer need to send PBS film crews to the innermost regions of deepest darkest Neanderthalia to record the situation.

I might just make a trip to NO to see it myself. After all, isn't Mardi Gras coming up? :-D

"Where would you go? I just wanted some opinions on this site. What city and state would you head to, or country?"

In the event our resources are inadequate for real retirement 10-12 years from now, we would consider relocating to the pacific coast of Nicaragua. Physically it is very similar to Costa Rica but has not yet been overrun with expensive developments for the second house crowd. San Juan del Sur is delightful:

http://www.sanjuandelsur.org.ni/

Locally grown foods and free range cattle are abundant slightly inland. When I last looked into this (2005) Nicaragua had the lowest delinquency rates (CR not excluded) in all of Central America. Nice people too - its like a throw back to a simpler time.

Incidentally (since this is a RE site) when my little old lady and I visited in 2005 there was a full blown realestate mania in progress. We ended up buying three different building lots for a total of 45K. We were told two years later that they were now worth 100K. Now we suspect we couldn't get what we paid for them. One lot is very near Popooyo on a shrimp and wildlife filled lagoon (estero) right where the lagoon opens drains out onto the beach. Looks like something right out of a adventure travel brochure.

http://www.surfnicaragua.com/nicaragua.php

Within the US, the Northwest is a popular haven for survivalists due to its environment and population density. Oregon, more specifically. Idaho has it's own but they tend to be overly religious and a little weird, IMO

Outside of US, New Zealand is a popular get away as well as certain locales in South America. A good friend of mine is married to a Peruvian woman and they are going to pick up a piece of land down their this summer. It's been reported in a South American news paper that the Bush family bought a 100K acre ranch in Uruguay.

Mad Max is not an appropriate analogy. Think more "Children of Men" in the short term. Extremely high unemployment and the wealthy barricaded in certain areas with a very brutal government. They have been modifying and creating laws for the last 8 years to deal with this sort of thing. The Bill of Rights is no longer valid legally and certain privacy eroding laws will ensure that no dissent will be allowed.

This collapse should start accelerating here in the spring-summer with a lot of high profile BKs and very high unemployment numbers. I'd say by this time next years we won't recognize our country.

Looking around the world it's pretty easy to see that there is a immense amount of inertia in the east to start currencies backed by something and Rumor has it they will be launched by early 2010. The time frames are rumors the mass intention is not. I recommend to anybody that they should read Putin's speech from Davos. It's quite enlightening.

The whole western financial system is insolvent and the baltic and eastern european states are about to start defaulting and our biggest banks are about to be nationalized, which really is not really what nationalizing is about this is more a dump the junk on America move. If everybody has not noticed no matter how much money we give the banks it does not solve the problem.

Right now, it looks like our officials are faking it. It's not hard to see that the economy that we have been dependent of for the last 35 years is not going to be possible anymore. The FIRE economy is going to be a fraction of what it was and all the service and retail that is supported is going away. I'd expect GM to go down pretty soon which makes certain portions of the midwest a wasteland. In Detroit the average home cost about 18K. Combine this with a general shrinkage in all other sections and I'd put unemployment 25-35% by mid-late 2010. Supposedly 1 in 9 Americans are on food stamps right now and unemployment is already close to 14% according to the un-scrubbed government numbers. They do keep two sets of books and only release the scrubbed numbers as official.

What about that cavehouse someone posted about a few days ago. Was in Ohio or Missori.

We live on a barrier island in Florida which is heaven.

I thought with the economic collapse I would see thousands of economic refugees from the north around here...but I haven't seen anything like that.