CV is where you find the largest concentration of physicians, attorneys, C level execs etc. HH Incomes of 300 to 500K are pretty common there. Most of these folks wont be crushed by severe recessions. Additionally most of these folks bought homes well under 2X their current annual earnings in pre-bubble times.
While I agree with all of the above, there are other factors that could cause declines despite those factors. I’ve lived in CV for almost 6 years, and of the people I know with HH incomes in that range, quite a few of them are business owners. Obviously their businesses are successful at this point, but if there’s a moderate or worse recession, that could change. Also, I would guess that there are plenty of people in the newer developments who are typical of the “other half” of CV residents. They make 100k-200k/yr, and they really stretched to buy, figuring on continued appreciation. If prices do continue coming down even at their current (very slow) pace, they may not be able to hang on when their loans reset.
It won’t take very many from either of those two categories to start lowering the comps and accelerating the price declines.
