My wife and I lived in San Diego for 30 years. We were die-hard San Diegans but we had a strong feeling that what is happening now was going to happen on some level……….most likely a 25-40% meltdown. So, in early 2005, we sold our home for a huge profit and moved to the mountains of South Carolina where land and homes are very inexpensive. We’re constantly watching the San Diego housing market to see just how far this goes and if prices ever get back to a sane level, we will sell our home and move back. You didn’t have to be a rocket scientist to figure out that there was a huge probability of a bubble-burst when fewer and fewer people could qualify for a mortgage (and that was with the liar loans/2-28 mortgages/and all the other smoke & mirror chicanery that was taking place in the mortgage business). We believe that as more homeowner loans reset at much higher rates, people will either walk away and go into foreclosure because they will see that they have negative equity due to falling prices or they will simply not be able to make the higher house payments.
If we’re wrong, we have a fully paid for home in a nice, quiet area with low taxes……….and although it’s not San Diego, it’s not a bad place to live. Anyone who buys a home for the next couple of years in Southern CA (except the $1 million plus properties that seem to be immune from the bubble-burst) must be out of their mind or know some hard inside information that the rest of us are not aware of.
