[quote=sdrealtor]CAR
You need to take off less stable jobs glasses because the buyers of most of the homes we are talking about are not paycheck employees but rather doctors, lawyers, cpas, stockbrokers, business owners, consultants and other self employeed folks. They arent affected by less stable DB plans and always paid for their own healthcare or still get it for next to nothing.[/quote]
sdr,
Trust me, we know plenty of doctors, lawyers, drug researchers, hedge fund managers, business owners, consultants, people in the entertainment industry (we were both born in L.A., and lived in the neighborhoods where many of them lived — we grew up with many of them or their kids), etc. Not a single one of them would say that they feel more financially comfortable today than ten or twenty years ago. I’ve mentioned it before, but the entertainment industry in So Cal is dying, and has been for many years. The music industry is a tiny fraction of what it was twenty years ago, and the movie industry is following close behind. Hedge fundies are worried about upcoming tax changes, and law firms have been laying people off (and pay has been going down in a number of specialties). NOBODY is immune from the current economic climate.
More to the point, while some people will always do better than others, it is the aggregate that matters most. In order to sustain high housnig prices over time, you need a critical mass of people who are willing to pay significantly more than the majority of local residents.
While you might be a realtor, it doesn’t mean that buyers and sellers (or any other non-realtors) are ignorant about the market. I was following California real estate long before you moved here. My parents were in the RE industry, and worked as brokers, property managers (commercial and residential), and investors. My DH’s family was in commercial construction (both his mom and dad). This isn’t new or unknown territory to us.
