sdrealtor: I think that too many people and possibly you, have been immersed in the SoCal real estate game so long that you don’t really realize what happens in most of the rest of the USA. Things have been so out of whack and crazy in CA when it comes to housing prices that it’s easy to get totally out of touch with reality. I believe that there will be plenty of willing sellers (The Banks) when they eat enough of these properties and they sit on them long enough. Several markets (not just one) in Florida have already had builders selling their remaining inventory of new homes at 50% less than they were selling them for just a year or two ago and in Sacramento, there are REO’s that the banks have priced at 50% discounts (homes less than 3-4 years old) to move them but they can’t find qualified buyers. Wanna guess the financial hit that they’ll wind up taking on those? My point is that these tract homes have no special pedestal that they sit on and just because a bunch of fools bought into the game and drank the kool-aid by paying too much for these homes when they were new. They may only be several years old but that doesn’t meant that they can’t see some severe drops when enough standing inventory sits on the lenders books for too long a period and the stockholders start demanding that they do something about it. I worked as an executive for several very large corporations and also was the CEO of a large retail corporation for 15 years and I’ve seen the pressure come raining down from the stockholders too many times. I think that it will also happen when it comes to the REO inventory that is growing like wild weeds. Add to that, the homeowners who will have to sell due to job transfers, divorces and job loses and will have to compete with the REO’s and you’re going to see some big drops in pricing. Simple logic tells me that the good ole times for the CA real estate market have gone bye-bye for quite a few years to come.
