Could be a price drop - or could be several years/a decade of price stagnation until overall inflation catches up to house prices.

All over the 909 - Chino, Menifee, Murietta etc. etc.

Cheap sells. Big time. You'd be surprised what you get right now for $160K - very modern, well constructed home with a yard and irrigation. Decent finish work, granite, tile, super-insulated. Much nicer than my first home!

I wouldn't want to sell a McMansion tho...

I wish we had those here...

and then you can spend 5 hours a day commuting! Special bonus feature...

True dat!

plus you can get the bulk discount on grafitti removal. Yo.

Is that Riverside you are referring to?

Man that sucked driving thru on a Friday night.. I swore I would never move there. They have traffic reports that run @ 10PM..

rjp

They also have commuter trains from there which makes me wonder why anyone on earth would ever drive to/from there given the alternatives that actually do exist.

We considered this when we were out there and tested it out a few times - it's a viable alternative to sitting on the hell-hole of the 91 day after day - or agreeing to the extortion terms of the "91 Express Lanes".

If you live in Riverside you should seriously question why you bother to live in SoCal at all. I mean, it's not like you get any of the benefits of living here. It's cold in the winter, hot as hell in the summer, ugly, and more than likely you commute for hours to LA. Low humidity tho.

I took a quick look at Chino real estate. Almost everything under 220k is condo/complex, no individual homes.

Unless things have changed significantly in the last two years, that will be the case anywhere in southern CA. The only place we found single-family homes less than $250k was in the hood/ghetto, or very specific areas that were far away from the cities - Oceanside, Big Bear/Arrowhead, Lake Elsinore, etc.

Anything in "the sprawl" will be a glorified apartment until you get to about the $350k-$400k range, unless you want to live in a place with occasional bullet holes.

I said the same thing for people who lived in El Cajon when I lived in San Diego. They might as well have lived in Dallas (we had facilities in Dallas) and paid no income tax and had housing and cost of living for 1/2 the price.

James, El Cajon now has an 8.75% sales tax, so they might be able to spruce it up a bit. That sales tax rate seems to be all the rage in the area lately. At the height of the feeding frenzy, I always saw twenty somethings buying McMansions, cruising around in Escalades, buying motorcycles, dune buggies, etc., etc., etc. I knew it would all fall down and the twenty something cuties might end up giving up their shopping sprees and lattes for a job somewhere down the line. I'm still wondering about the long term social effects that will have in terms of the divorce rate and other things that may indirectly have some economic impact.

Oh, thing have changed out in So. California quite a bit in the last few years.

To the tune of prices falling 40-50% in a lot of areas. Like in Riverside. Houses by the blocks for under $250K, well under, including houses with pools, etc.

Just a quick search, random example.

Riverside CA Homes for Sale & Riverside Real Estate - Zillow

These were pushing twice as much just a couple of bubbly years ago.

You must not have looked in the right place. Looks like tons of single family houses currently available in Chino for under $220K

(Also looks like half of Chino is in foreclosure, so wait a year or two and there will be lots more).

Chino CA Homes for Sale & Chino Real Estate - Zillow

Orange county, ca is still obscene. what really rattles me is the taxes. 2% on a 600k house. Ouch. i read recently that the infrastucture bonds " mello roos " that are tied to each property can be increased by 2% each year. I'm sure someone has a calculator handy but if your " mello " is 5k today whats that in 2033 when the bond expires........

Part of the motivation for my rant - I wish our media could show some DATA like this chart. Prices went too high, they're largely adjusting back to this inflation adjusted normal, we've still got a ways to go. Done deal. There's never any suggestion that home values went far too high in a bubble market and that the adjustment is normal, it's always the sky falling.

In areas where prices never went too high, nothing has really changed. Our local market is reportedly fairly slow but homes in my neighborhood are still selling. I've checked the sale prices (listed online), sellers aren't having to significantly drop their prices to sell them either. But this is Wichita where you can expect a steady 3-6% yearly increase in your property value, no bubbles here.

Like I mentioned in the More Bad RE News thread, no one talks about that (except for guys like Peter Schiff--but he is/was openly laughed at by just about everyone in medialand) because no one wants to believe that. It doesn't make us feel good, so we don't want to believe in the basics of economics. But hey, our government is now creating us lots of new jobs. Unemployment isn't rising as fast as it used to. The economy is getting better. Retailers are having a better Christmas. More people are buying cars. Housing prices (or sales--whichever is better but usually not both) are rising. It's just a matter of time before we're all fine, again. Good thing we just waited out this whole thing. Phew.

If Peter Schiff's predictions come true, housing will be down by another 30% from here. New construction will cease (as if it is alive even today). Home sales will suffer further as half of the nation's housing will have negative equity. Refi activity is predicted to plummet over the next few years. What happens to municipalities as housing values remain flat to down? How do they generate additional income to maintain a rapid growth in infrastructure?

This stuff worries me and it should worry you. Forget the media. I don't watch TV. I listen to NPR, but they sugar-coat the stories. You have to be willing to ingest the information and form conclusions. Otherwise, if you run with the pack, don't be surprised when you see that cliff. Like Noah says, the pack doesn't want to see charts. That requires thought and attention span.

I really do not see anything positive on the economic front. The media attaches itself to every little positive blip and declares recovery is in effect. Per the media even the threat of a double dip is evaporating. Trouble is they are right but only because there never was a dip in the first place. The dip of which they speak was merely a pause in the decline. I think the media is in the throes of the bitter realization that they have duped themselves and their brethren at their wine and brie parties. Fear is keeping them together, traveling in a pack; none wanting to stray from the center mass of the herd.