Nice reference SD, here’s my take that won’t suck. I will not attempt to address the economy as a whole, just the R/E market, many of you have made cogent arguments on both sides as far as the economy relates to the internet. The R/E cycle will not follow the past trend, the availability of information has produced hundreds of thousands of arm chair quarterbacks. I have no work experience or education in the R/E market, yet I am arrogant enough to think I more informed than half of the professionals in the last downturn because I can access the information that used to be mostly private or difficult to access. Most importantly, I am not alone. We can seek out information that we want, not what is chosen for us and because of that most intelligent people (who are often those with the most money) can become immune to the spin. The crazy upswing was fueled by the internet in some respects and created a lot of amatuer investors, the downturn will create amatuer bottom feeders. R/E volatility won’t be smoothed out, the dips and peaks will become more severe or maintain the recent severity. Will we see chunks of drops, oh yes. I got an e-mail from D.R. horton yesterday about an unadvertised 50k price reduction on everything, 1800-2350 sq ft sfr’s that were 389-419, now 339-379, in a day. Temec is 6 months ahead of S.D. and probably 3 months ahead of the 78 corridor, so set your alarm clocks clones because the chunk theory is about to become reality. Rack that post (Jim Rome linguistics blamed on SD realtor for starting it).
