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Gentrification is often an interesting process to watch, but not everyone involved is a winner. It’s good for the people who had the foresight and courage to get involved early – and they should be rewarded because it was a risky thing to do. It’s not so good for the sheeple that followed the trend. A big correction will fry a lot of them.

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SoCalAlarm,

If you really are priced well you can probably get your price, but it may take some patience. I hope it works out for you.

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Those price cuts in Del Sur are pretty big, like on the order of 20%+. Considering it hasn’t even been a year yet since that area peaked the rate of decline is pretty steep. They probably aren’t advertising it in the MLS yet because they don’t want to get lynched by their prior buyers; or their pending sales either. A PO’d owner in that neighborhood can do a lot of damage by posting a couple signs of protest in their front yard.

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If they’re looking at the public records available through the MLS it might appear that Wells purchased when in fact they foreclosed. The transfer kinda looks like a sale.

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Despite what we THINK might happen over the next few years, none of us really KNOWS what will happen with housing prices. Five years from now it could be -50%; or it could be +10% – nobody can know for sure. Likewise, there’s no way to know what interest rates and underwriting criteria will be like in the future.

If you’re looking at your condo primarily in terms of a housing payment then I don’t see the benefit to selling right now. If you’re looking at the paper equity and are not risk averse to try timing the market to parlay that equity into more then it might be worth your while to play.

You apparently have options and about as much security as is possible to have right now, so I think the decision really comes down to your priorities.

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Besides all that, we have had the FOB (fresh off the boat) engineers being brought in to depress engineering wages in this region. I guess the employers thought there was a shortage of engineers who would work for the wages they wanted to pay.

I think there were a LOT more $120k+ jobs created in the RE industry and its affiliates than in the tech sector.

Anyone catch the article in the Union-Trib today where an economist is forecasting a job reduction (statewide) of as many as 100,000 workers in the construction industry? Think about the ripples that kind of reduction would create. I don’t know what’s going to happen with all that but I do know the tech sector ain’t going to offset those losses.

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Ooops, I was still writing while the above was being posted. Sorry for repeating

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LOL

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People didn’t stretch to pay 50% plus of their income on ARM payments because they were expecting their wages to increase enough to eventually make the full payment; they did it because they thought there was a big payoff in the near future.

Besides, if the tech sector was that big a factor why did our market do an about-face and enter into a decline? This region has close to 3,000,000 residents. Did the tech sector suddenly lose 15,000 jobs that were paying $100k+?

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So we’re talking about the “increase” (not the total number) in high wage jobs being sufficient to push pricing to triple?

Not a chance. Those addition of those jobs had NOTHING to do with it. I doubt there are enough of those guys around to have accounted for an average increase of $5,000 on a county wide basis, let alone $300,000+.

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My grandmother once owned a house located directly under the takeoff pattern for LAX and overlooking the beach areas. Spectacular view but the noise from those jets was overwhelming. It would rattle the house and you couldn’t hold a converstation until it passed over. Those neighborhoods all got condemned in the early 1970s and now they’re nothing but sand, but there were some nice homes up there at one time.

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I don’t think it matters how many people we legally allow to immigrate here or how we allocate our quotas. We could allow 11 million unskilled workers in to work here and there would still be another 11 million who would come in illegally. We’d still have our own “La Raza” types marching in parades waving the Mexican flag (try demonstrating like that in Mexico). Those guys would still
argue that this is their land in the first place, that we have no sovereign right to close our borders, and it’s a human rights violation to make it difficult for Mexicans to gain entry here upon demand.

Meanwhile, the Mexican government shoots people coming across their southern border.

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As much money as they charge for those upgrades, I’d seriously consider making a deal for a house with no flooring or cabinetry and do the interior myself. Pay the base price as if it had the standard buildout; get a credit for the itemized total of the “standard” cabinetry, fixtures, appliances and flooring; and then hire an outside contractor to finish the interior to your specs. You could probably parlay an accurate credit into a very nice interior buildout and save yourself an easy $50,000 or more. And it would still be financed in with the base price.

One more thing to keep in mind – it’s highly likely that the differences in builder upgrades for these homes will become basically invisible in the resale market 5 years from now. Friends don’t let friends get carried away at a developer’s design center.

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I agree with JES (both posts) on the mish-mash of styles in some of these subdivisions. I perceive that as detracting from the sense of neighborhood. I realize they don’t want everything to look the same, but “similar” is not the same thing as “same”.

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When used by the savvy (or lucky) buyers with specific holding periods this type of loan makes sense. A lot of people have indeed made a lot of money using these to enable stretching their mortgage payments for the bigger/better house. The problem is, not everyone is savvy (or lucky) and market conditions do change.

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The argument about that I’ve seen is that a lot of the brokers assume that they’ll have to do all the work for both sides of a transaction involving a FSBO or discount broker. I’d say that’s probably a fair assumption in many cases.

Of course, I’ve also heard comments from a few of them about avoiding listings with cut-rate brokers as a form of competition control, too.

A seller who really is savvy about pricing their home probably could do well by paying for a discount broker or an attorney to oversee the technicalities. A seller who is less than savvy would need more help.

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Speaking personally, I bought pre-bubble and it doesn’t matter to my living arrangements whether prices go up or down. I couldn’t rent for anywhere near as little as my mortgage payment. My home is my home, not some fabulous wealth building system.

We may not be able to predict a bottom – and we never claimed to – but we can recognize a declining market with no end in sight when we see it. Waiting for the market to correct before entry or re-entry is a sign of optimism, not sour grapes. We’re looking forward on our decisions, not backward. That’s why most of us aren’t stressed – we’re in a good place now and it’s just getting better.

If anything, your rant seems to be indicative of no small level of bitterness. What happened? Did your ARM reset and now you have to fork over another 20% on your condo payment? Did the market turn before you could complete your flip? Did you just get laid off your job because construction is slowing down? Something pissed you off, what was it?

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