If I’ve read sdr’s recent comments correctly I think I’m with him.

High-end San Diego neighbourhoods are not like a nice area in the Suburbs of Detroit. There, if local industry takes a dive so do prices because no one that doesn’t work there, or is crazy, dreams “if only I could move to Detroit…”

In San Diego, people with money from all over the world travel here, research, and find it has the most temperate climate of any major city in the world. It is beautiful. You can surf, snow ski, and dune buggy, all in the same day. This is one of the premier places to live in the entire planet.

Thus, the high-end San Diego market is somewhat insulated from the vagaries of the economy. Not totally to be sure, but it isn’t so dependent on high wage earners from local industry that the metrics of other markets easily apply.

Less than perfect homes on less than perfect lots will probably come down even in the best regarded areas, but I don’t see the market crashing around properties without issues in the best parts of San Diego.

Moreover, some people with money feel compelled to put it in real estate now for a variety of economic reasons. And there are a lot of people with a lot of money in SoCal. We do pretty well for people who grew up with nothing but are hardly what we would consider “rich”. We do have rich friends however, and you probably wouldn’t be able to tell looking at them. And just in our little circle there must be at least ten couples with homes well over the $1,000,000 mark. Heck, I know two of the couples paid over $20,000,000 for their houses. These people are out there and even when they could live anywhere in the world, the choose southern California.

They seem to get that way, by the way, not by working for someone else. So don’t assume that just because a lot of people are losing their jobs that the high-end is necessarily hurting in the same way.

My opinion is worth no more than you’re paying for it to be sure, but time will tell who is right.