DemonDoug-Alstry is MUCH MORE Bearish
June 05, 2008
– Comments (3)
Demon, I couldn't make this stuff up if I tried. It is simply the facts and Alstry is all about facts and only the facts. And somepeople still want to build spec homes in CA??????
And as far as you looking 20 years out, you probably don't have to look much beyond November.
From Blogs Ben Jones' thehousingbubbleblog.com:
“As the housing slowdown and credit crunch metastasized through the economy, new vehicle sales in the state fell almost 19 percent in 2008’s first quarter compared to 2007’s first quarter, the California Motor Dealers Association said.”
“‘My family has owned this dealership for 71 years,’ said Bill Brunelli, director of operations at Central Chevrolet in Fremont. ‘I’ve been in the business all my life; I remember the oil embargo of the 1970s, and I’ve never seen anything like this. We used to sell 200 cars a month five years ago; now we may sell 20 or 30.’”
From ABC 7.com. “It’s a sign of the times — some very hard times. Bankruptcy filings are up, and in Orange County they are skyrocketing. One development Eyewitness News visited in Orange County is supposed to be a sprawling collection of new houses and townhomes.”
“But the only thing sprawling these days across the empty fields are the weeds. The real estate market is withering.”
“‘You can probably drive around most of Southern California and see real estate development projects that have, frankly, just stopped,’ said bankruptcy attorney Jim Bastian.”
“Bankruptcy filings in Southern California are skyrocketing. The latest year-to-year numbers for April show bankruptcies in L.A. County are up 92 percent. In Riverside County, they’re even worse at 125 percent. In Orange County, statistics show bankruptcies are up a staggering 153 percent.”
“‘It’s going to get worse before it gets better,’ said Bastian. ‘Most of the people that I’ve talked to, and if you talk to experts in the industry, they’ll tell you it might be 2010 or 2011 before we see prices get back to where they were even three or four years ago.’”
“‘People who should not have been in this situation, where they’re buying a $400,000 or $500,000 house and having a mortgage payment of $4,000 or $5,000 per month, when they’re only making $25,000 or $35,000 a year,’ said Bastian.”
The Contra Costa Times. “Under water. Upside down. Negative equity. No matter the terminology to describe the erosion of home equity in the East Bay, the conclusion is inescapable: A local housing sector that once was remarkable for how high it could soar has plunged into the depths.”
“About two out of three East Bay homes that were bought since 2005 are now worth less than the mortgages on the houses, according to a Zillow.com study.”
From Sacramento Landing Blog:
From the Associated Press:
Robert Lindsey was not surprised by new data last week that showed new home sales have fallen more than 40 percent from their peak almost three years ago. He can tell from his company's bank account. "We're literally losing money every month," said Lindsey, general manager of Signature Drywall Inc., in Sacramento, which installs drywall in new homes and apartments in the Sacramento and San Francisco areas. In 2005, the firm raked in some $30 million in sales. Last year, sales were less than half that, and this year Lindsey hopes he can make $8 million. "It's kind of like bleeding to death," he said.
...
In California alone, subcontractors have laid off, on average, up to 80 percent of their staff, according to the California Professional Association of Specialty Contractors in Sacramento, which mostly represents firms engaged in new home construction projects...Head hunters say workers have fled California for Utah, Texas and other states where there's a better chance to get work in homebuilding.
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