Well, there goes the housing can only go down when there is a downturn in employment argument. I lived in Seattle for over a decade and I remember what these types of layoffs do to the local economy.

“This week, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger wrote to President Bush asking that funding for more C-17s be included in the federal budget. The governor wrote that the program “has a multibillion-dollar impact on the local economy”

yep

This is on top of the Nissan move this year. Nissan also pulled many high level marketing jobs out of the area, I know several people that are moving to Nashville because Nissan was their key account. Rumor has it that the other Asian car makers may follow suit for the same reasons Nissan left. If we are to experience a recession then IMO southern California will be ground zero of that recession. You have a rapidly contracting RE market combined with the loss of high paying Aerospace jobs plus companies like Nissan leaving the area. Those are just the headline companies, how many small businesses are leaving that you don’t hear about. Combine that with the fact that recruiters can no longer entice people to move to California…….talk about some disturbing under currents in this economy. Time will tell.

Well it didn’t during the last downturn starting in 01. The Pacific NW got hit pretty hard in comparison to the rest of the country. The Nasdaq crashed wiping out the dotcoms and technology, then that was followed by 9/11 and a big aerospace downturn. The impact on RE was muted due the FED taking interest rates to 1% but property sales south of the 90 where many Boeing employees lived went pretty soft, keep in mind they did not have bubble pricing to begin with.

Also there was a big aerospace downturn in 93 and 94 that took home values down about 10%. I bought a townhome in Kirkland Wash in 93 about 10% below my next door neighbors place (same unit, same view) that they purchased in 91. Kirkland is right next to Microsoft but Boeing layoffs still impacted the area.