JWM: We bought our house here in Fallbrook for $425k. That represented the single largest purchase I had ever made in my life. I literally lost sleep thinking about possible market reverses, whatever. Then as things really started to jump (the run-up in housing), I went from thinking that I must have been some kind of genius to really sensing that something was waaaaaaay outta whack.
I had arguments with people during ’03, ’04 and into ’05 about the SD market and why it was not only different this time (all the usual RE propaganda), but that the SD market somehow had the ability to defy gravity apparently in perpetuity. Having grown up in the SF/Bay Area, I know that certain markets (like San Francisco city) have remained resilient regardless of external factors.
After a while, you start thinking that maybe YOU are the idiot and everyone else is right. But, I remember having had the same feelings during the NASDAQ/dot.com run-up as well. Listening to some twenty-something CEO of kozmo.com, or webvan, or eToys going on and on about the “New Economy” and realizing that the emperor really wasn’t wearing any clothes.
The NASDAQ implosion erased $4Tn. How big a bust is this one?
