IMHO, the local SD MSM had a major conflict interest regarding the state of RE in SD and SoCal in general: Real Estate related Ad spending.
I arrived here in SD from Chicago back in the fall of 04 and was shocked at the amount of RE advertising going on here in SD and SoCal. I had never seen anything that so utterly saturated in the media as RE ads here in SD. It was no wonder that papers like the UT didn’t really start digging into this until recently, and too late in my opinion.
Not only was the media here saturated with RE garbage but so was / is the culture here as well. It was, and still is, like a mass housing psychosis that had permeated all levels of society here in SD. I remember getting weird looks when I would ask how people could afford 10 to 11 times income for crappy stucco boxes that wouldn’t last one winter in Chicago. No one had substantive answer for me beyond “it is California, we have nice weather here…”. That is how I found Piggington. It lead me to scour the internet trying to figure out what the hell was going on because none of it made any sense to me.
