Via 2blowhards..... California home values really took a dive in February. What also caught my eye were the actual prices.....
The median price of an existing, single-family detached home in California during February 2008 was $409,240, a 26.2 percent decrease from the revised $554,280 median for February 2007, C.A.R. reported. The February 2008 median price fell 4.8 percent compared with January’s revised $429,790 median price.
With those prices I can understand why some people would be tempted by a high-risk ARM. It might be the only way they'd even have a chance to own a home.
Ah well, it could be worse......there's always Zimbabwe (via Andrew Sullivan)
After a catastrophic few years that have seen the economy crumble and inflation soar to 200,000 percent, Mugabe's most powerful political weapon – fear – appears to be eroding. To understand what 200,000 percent inflation means, a journalist friend I was traveling with, N., said that on Friday, he had lunch at a hotel in Harare , where a local beer cost 2 million Zimbabwean dollars (less than $1). He passed by the hotel after work the same day and the same beer was going for more than 4 million.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
3 comments:
Prices aren't quite that crazy in Oregon; for many years it has been customary in Oregon to grumble about Californians who migrate here to take advantage of our less expensive real estate. The disparity has evened out over the last 10 or 15 years, but housing still is not as crazy-expensive here as it is in CA.
But it's still crazy. We thought we were spending exhorbitantly to buy our first house in '95 for $80K, which was nearly triple its sale price from not so many years before that. Then we felt like we were stealing when we followed the market and sold it for $115k in 2000. Today the same crappy little house would sell for $230k in a heartbeat.
It's staggering. But you find yourself inside it and there's no way to opt out. It's the market and it doesn't answer to common sense.
I feel terrible for all the people who came to this insanity a few years too late, without any equity or other means.
When I lived in San Francisco three years ago, prices were sort of near the bottom, since the post-dot com boom period had about ended, but they were still crazy expensive. There's actually something freeing about being so priced out of the market that you don't have a choice but to rent. That's how it's been here in Florida for the last three years as well.
I suppose relatively affordable housing is an advantage to living in South Dakota. Although certain parts of the state have what I consider outrageous prices, it does seem to be mostly demand driven, and that median CA price will still buy a pretty extravagant house here.
Post a Comment