lpetit you will not see any sort of substantial drops in housing prices in such a short timeframe, certainly not in a month or 2 months. You may see some softening as we move into the fall and winter for homes that were NOT WELL PRICED to begin with. You see alot of hopeful sellers have used the past opportunity to price their homes in a more ridiculous manner as they feel they can get a premium that no longer exists. I know a listing that will come up in Palacio in another month or so that will be that way. Anyways as those homes sit on the market some of the sellers will realize they need to price better and will reprice.

Don’t expect a rash of bank owned homes to suddenly pop up in CV either. Yes you may see occassional CV homes dribble out as they go from the trustee sale to the beneficiary and back to the open market for sale but anyone that thinks a deluge is coming is irrational. Loan mods are indeed impacting things greatly. I just pulled a CMR home off the market because HUD worked out a loan mod with Citibank on a clients first mortgage. She was selling the home and was not even needing to short the first! She was only shorting the second.

So my advice is that if you think prices are going to drop substantially I do not believe they will. Yes we have had a serious runup, and no I do not believe next June you will see a 14% hike but you will not see a major drop either.

My belief is unchanged….that we will not see substantial price drops in San Diego until mortgage rates increase dramatically. We may see smaller price fluctuations and flatness as the market reaches a new yet manipulated equilibrium. However until our credit is disrupted by bond market distortions, it is happy times.