Please help me to understand why prices won’t drop 50-60% from the top of the market. If I “zillow” most any property in San Diego county, it was worth only HALF of where we are today within the last 5 years. Homes we have been looking at, for instance, in the Poway school district that sold for 900K in 2005 were selling for 450K in 2001.

If you can convince me why a retracement of only 15-25% is in order (effectively rolling back the clocks by only a year or so’s appreciation in this near decade long bull run) instead of a return to at least 2003’s prices, I’d highly appreciate it.

I’m going to be hard to convince, though, because I have lived through enough “it’s different this time” scenarios to know that IT ISN’T DIFFERENT THIS TIME. So sorry to see that you’re on the hook for at least a 320K paper loss (-40%) and more likely 400K to 450K of loss in the coming return to a TRUE “normal” market.