Prices will continue to skid downward. Foreclosures will increase even though Countrywide and other lenders may adjust the rates because most of the owners in CA bought their home and hoped to make money from the continued appreciation. Now that the cat is out of the bag, how many do you think will keep making their payments and the cost of keeping up a home? If this site is still up and running in late 2011, people will still be posting questions like, “when will we hit the bottom”? Then, a couple of years after that, people will be posting the question, “when do you think that prices will start rising again”?
This is a long-term “down cycle” to the bottom and it’s going to be a long, long, time before prices start climbing again. (In bubble markets) I now live in Greenville, SC (left SD in the spring of 2005) which has a good economy but never had the run-up in prices like CA and other bubble markets so we’re not feeling hardly any drops in value with real estate. We are like the majority of the country. So, when you read these proclamations from the NAR, they may apply (somewhat) to many markets such as the one I live in but they aren’t going to apply to CA for a long time.
