I don’t share your gloom and doom predictions about the general economy but it could be a matter of semantics. I didn’t think that the early 90s downturn was that bad. Even if we have twice that hardship in this coming RE crash San Diego and California will move on.
People will go bankrupt, and there’ll be foreclosures aplenty. But that’s our capitalist system’s way of cleaning house and reallocating resources to more efficent uses. Yes, many will hurt but life will go on. The economy will not come to a halt. I predict 2 recessions before real estate prices stabilize and stagnate for the next 15 years.
And I do belive that SD housing will drop 50% from the peak (I’m not talking about the median but same house comparaison). For the sake of the general economy, I hope that people walk away from their houses instead of scraping by and holding on. It’s better to see house prices drop than people retrench on all other consumption to hold on to the albatrosses.