Prices have already gone down, in some cases 15-20%, and yet unlike the lurkers here, most people in SD county have no clue about the true condition of the market. They see the median price leveling or even going up, but they pay no attention to the other ways to measure prices that are taught here. Far more accurate measures. They read the UT and NCTimes and find false encouragement that we are near the bottom, but they don’t take the time to read the Voice of San Diego. And overall, they spend about 1/100th the time that we all do analyzing the market. If they live, or want to buy, in Carlsbad or Encintas, they likely think that the crash hasn’t affected them and that prices will soon rise again now that the worst is over.

Living in the middle of this bubble does one of two things to a man. He either gains insight into the insanity, removes himself from it and takes appropriate action, or he gets so deeply involved in the action that he is forever seduced by the game itself. It is not that far removed from gambling. Start with $100, throw some craps, win $1,000, and I cash out while the guy next to me decides that the hand will turn hot again soon and lets it roll. Only in this case, instead of the odds being slightly worse than even, they are probably entirely stacked against the better with very little gain to be expected for so much risk. And yet new buyers continually come to the table thinking “700 k is alot of money, but it used to be 775k, so this is a real baragin and it is not like prices here are really going to go down that miuch further. Besides, since we make 110k a year, we need the tax write off…”