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Living the California debt based dream – Bankruptcies in California increased 557%
The California housing market sits in an odd stage of limbo. You can see that the public for the most part is fully aware of the situation like an Alamo standoff in real estate. People fully acknowledge now that banks are holding off a tremendous amount of inventory. There is little that is secretive about the shadow inventory at this point. Yet with all the distressed properties, people are looking at artificially low rates and are wondering if this is the time to buy (assuming they are not one of the 20+ percent that are underemployed). Adjustable rate mortgage use is at all-time lows and why would you not go with a fixed rate given the insanely low rates? Yet the market and economy is not healthy. Mortgage rates and low inventory would be signs of a healthy market in other times but the opposite is the case. What does this mean for housing going forward?
Low use of adjustable rate mortgages
The use of adjustable rate mortgage is at all-time lows:
Source: First Tuesday
The use of ARMs is practically non-existent when at the peak it was nearly reaching 80 percent of all loan originations. This is the Alt-A and option ARM universe that we once inhabited. The low usage of ARMs might be obvious on the surface but I think it tells us more about the market. Some ARMs currently have incredibly low rates (yet many go under conventional underwriting standards requiring a larger down payment). The argument coming from some is that mortgage rates will remain low for a very long time similar to what Japan has experienced. If this is the case, then wouldn’t you think that going for an ARM with a 1 to 2 percent cut in APR would make sense? My take from this is that the public doesn’t believe that the Fed can keep this artificially low rate going for a long-time so grab those fixed rates while you can. Take a look at all the bailouts and actions the Fed has had to do to keep rates low:
Source: Bruce Kasting
In other words, the Fed has had to become incredibly active and become even more aggressive just to keep rate at where they stand today. The low usage of ARMs reflects the notion that this is the rock bottom for interest rates and people need to lock in before something happens. Yet the bigger question is, what is happening? The economy is still facing tough challenges ahead. State and Federal governments will get a piece of their pie. Even if you look at some places in Orange County with high HOAs and Mello-Roos the fees are already starting to add up in non-mortgage related items.
The state of the California economy
Everything would seem to favor a booming housing market but that is not happening. You essentially have a sub-group of folks with equity in their homes trying to trade to one another and first time buyers trying to scrape together enough for that 3.5 percent down payment FHA insured loan. This is a reflection of a poor economy more than a healthy one. Take a look at bankruptcies in the state:
Keep in mind that the falloff in 2006 hit because of the rush to file in 2005 before bankruptcy law became tougher and more difficult to process. We are very much near peak levels under these new stringent requirements. In 2006 we were closer to 35,000 bankruptcy filings while last year we hit 230,000 (an increase of 557%). What this dramatic change signifies is that the underlying economy is still very weak and many people are unable to meet their current debts. A large part of this is driven by housing debt via mortgages or HELOCs or other forms of debt based spending. Keep in mind over 30 percent of California mortgage holders are currently underwater owing more on their home than it is currently worth.
Again the question remains, who can pay for these homes with a poor economy? The major growth group in the state is from baby boomers:
You have an aging population that essentially can sell to one another and transfer equity to each other and a much less affluent younger population that is mired in other forms of debt including student debt. The above chart highlights where the growth will be. People form households in the 25 to 44 age range and you see growth in this segment is not exactly dramatic. Household incomes are flat for over a decade:
Moving forward this is very important. The leverage being afforded to the current market is driven by a few artificial items:
-Federal Reserve market actions as shown by a previous chart (risk of market disruptions become larger when confidence starts breaking)
-FHA insured loans requiring very little down (this is getting more expensive with default rates)
-Controlled shadow inventory by banks artificially restricting supply. This is artificial because accounting standards and bailouts were essentially developed to change the way banks did business at the expense of the public.
The public now largely realizes that banks are operating in a pseudo-market and prime properties are being allocated even before they hit the MLS. I’ve gotten a few e-mails from folks seeing some interesting action in the short sale process especially when it comes to more prime properties. Again, this is not a “free market” but one that is being carefully managed. Yet you need to ask to what end? The real economy doesn’t seem to be producing the jobs to sustain current prices. This November taxes will be on the table. When money is running short and employment opportunities seem limited you can expect the unexpected. Those that think housing is balancing itself out on its own need to look at that Fed chart again and examine FHA insured loan default rates.
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There is absolutly no inventory in the bay area, anywhere worth living, even the crap they are trying to sell next to facebook is going. I know the rest of the country is bad but it is bananas in the bay area right now. It has been for more than a year. Id really like someone to explain it with some charts and graphs.
There's almost no appropriately priced inventory in the $500K - $800K range in South coastal Orange County either. I've seen stuff initially listed for as much as 2 times eventual selling price, so appropriately priced must be emphasized.
At least around here it's because before prices moved up in the last several months, it was less expensive to own than rent, even if you would have put nothing down, and not even counting the tax advantages of owning. The Federal Reserve is obviously suppressing interest rates, and taking out fixed rate loans at or below the price inflation rate is one way to take advantage of it.
CA has become an inbreeding grd for very many and it shows that the field of Sciences is dominated by Asians and the natives are are the Slaves. Keep fucking and living on dole inbred Cali's. Gald I moved out fo that shit hole.
Washington State has also been sold to the Chinese, who buy Washington State's apples and pears. IN return, the Chinese have been given virtually All of the advanced spots (masters especially) at the U of W in computer sciences, physics, engineering. Intel not long ago was addressing this by saying they can't find an engineer who is a US citizen. How to change? Your universities and your colleges should be 100% Americans unless no American can be found who wants to go to college. We built these universities and colleges for our children; the elite give the spots away to increase their own funds and salaries. Treason is what it is called. Treason. California to the Canadian border: gone to China and Mexico.
Nice Dream one must say. CA dreamin. Keep smoking pot and live the lie. CA the Next Japan. No matter how u slice it and dice it.
You forgot about Kalifornia's stellar educational system where 8th graders rank 47th in science in the nation. Could it be the diversity who make up the school population (ie blacks and mexicans) and the liberals who control the educational system?
http://www.ocregister.com/news/students-353581-state-scores.html
Color & race mean nothing when it comes to educating a child.
There are many black, hispanic and asian home school/charter school kids thriving in California.
Obviously it means something: When you have the black culture as the rap culture you have children who are learning nothing. Also and bear this in mind...it is not racist but a referral to a previous culture....when American blacks had less opportunity; there was more pride: if you shined shoes you shined them great; if you were a railroad guy you did it great. Welfare brought sloth; sloth brings stupidity; end of the line. Before one can learn one has to have personal pride. Self-respect. And these do not come from a giant welfare complex cojoined with a rap culture.
When blacks score one standard deviation below whites in IQ and hispanics score only slightly higher and have little use for education, then you have a problem. The schools have been dumbed down to accommodate the lowest common denominator, which are black kids. It's been done in the name of "fairness" and "civil rights" when it's all about dumbing down the population and using a phony front as the reason. Don't like what I say? KMA
No, the schools have been dumbed down by the international banking cartel so that people won't be able to critically think.
They scapegoated blacks and latino kids in order to shift the blame off their own Machiavellian plot and to get the jibbling proles mad AT EACH OTHER so as not to be mad at the real bad apples - the international banking cartel.
Black people don't leave the borders wide open and allow illegals into school, bankster funded operatives do.
I thought "you people" were smart?
You are so busy getting off kicking a general population while it is down to realize you are playing checkers while the social engineers are playing 3-dimensional chess.
"Lord Rothschild, the social conditioning is strong. Word has it that 40% of the Zerohedge will support our international banking cartel if we mention black and Latino people. We get to covertly kill them off with eugenics and scapegoat them... excellent use of Rockefeller Foundation funds, Darth Rockefeller! Now point the Federal Reserve Death star at these people and put them out of their misery! Bwahahahaha - even many Zerohedge readers can't figure out the strategy! Hatinig on black and latino people while we DESTROOOOOOOY THEM!!!"
"[M]an who would not reason (think and use his own observations), a man who could not reason for himself is therefore a beast of burden and meat on the table by choice and consent."
~Albert Pike
“Shake off all fears of servile prejudices, under which weak minds are servilely crouched. Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call on her tribunal for every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a God, because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason than that of blindfolded fear.”
- Thomas Jefferson
Wow folks, what's up with the insecurity? Hating based off of skin color is simply ignorant. Yes, its true that, on average, African Americans score lower, but they also have lower wealth. That "system" so many of you seem to hate so much simply chose to scape goat on darker skinned people, on average.
I've known very intelligent and accomplished African Americans. I've known knuckleheads, too. But that's true of every skin color.
Judge people based on the content of their character and try to lead by example - we are all fighting the same tyranny, although, it has been quite a bit more deceitful and wicked to African Americans to date.
"We should hire three or four colored ministers, preferably with social-service backgrounds, and with engaging personalities. The most successful educational approach to the Negro is through a religious appeal. We don't want the word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population. and the minister is the man who can straighten out that idea if it ever occurs to any of their more rebellious members."
Margaret Sanger's December 19, 1939 letter to Dr. Clarence Gamble, 255 Adams Street, Milton, Massachusetts. Original source: Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College, North Hampton, Massachusetts. Also described in Linda Gordon's Woman's Body, Woman's Right: A Social History of Birth Control in America. New York: Grossman Publishers, 1976.
It sure would have been nice to have stuck up for them and defeated this tyranny in the past to it can't be unleashed on our families... but no, the ignorant sort of get off on thinking they are better than others based on skin color, and idea that probably takes about 2 IQ points to put together and the rest of the 95 (fluoride-like toxic waste has obliterated the rest).
EPA Scientists Union Opposes Water Fluoridation
http://www.nteu280.org/Issues/Fluoride/NTEU280-Fluoride.htm
State of the Science (GMO health defects)
http://responsibletechnology.org/resources/state-of-the-science
Look how that GMO pesticide facsimile "food" changes colors of mammal reproductive organs, how it sterilizes mammals and how it shrinks the few offspring that live.
Unsettling Accounts (GMO Bovine Growth Hormone)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eZkDikRLQrw
Its called slow sterilization, slow kill, slow maximize profits for Big Pharma / asset strip the elderly and impoverish their offspring.
Oh, you didn't think they were just going to stop with black people, did you?
Vote to Label GMO in California this November. If you don't live in CA, call everyone you know who does.
PS - You aren't seeing this on the "news..."
TEDxIowaCity - Dr. Terry Wahls - Minding Your Mitochondria
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KLjgBLwH3Wc
Blacks, by and large, have lower wealth because they're just not that bright. Not the other way around.
terryg999,
One day you will wish that your racism energy was spent fighting banksters instead of other victims of divide and conquer.
As a population, the African American experience was a b*.
Since you have fallen for the bankster's "divide and conquer" routine, genius that you are, we might find out how successful your progeny is when they are systematically deprived of resources.
People like me, on the other hand, seek out people with CHARACTER - right thinking people of all races, nationalities, creeds, heights, hair colors, etc... and rally around the beauty of individualism and freedom and try to argue the merits of IDEAS NOT SKIN COLOR... Some black folks are smart enough to be in this group... are you?
We need everyone to stand side by side to have a chance to resist this nasty banskter (primarily very light skinned at the top, BTW, but EVIL knows no skin color) tyranny...
But some will, no doubt, prefer to be enslaved so long as they have their two minutes of hate.
BTW, "black people" don't exist, just black individuals, each judged on the meritis of their individual character and abilities by men and women of sound mind.
i'z bee shootin' hoops. i'z gonna be a big
While you are busy mocking an entire group of people based on race, I was at the gym talking about debt based money to an African man. Guess where he was applying his Masters in Economics? Blackrock of all places.
It was an interesting conversation because he initially took the "holier than thou" economic superiority position and simply wouldn't listen to reason or the simple exponential debt math I was explaining to him. The propaganda runs thick.
Anyway, I eventually got through to him and "rung his bell," as it were. From that point on, we had a very good conversation about how "the system" (run at the top by mostly white folks - just want to make sure the genius racists get that point) really works.
Instead of being scared, or insecure, or so pathetic I get off mocking others, I engage with PEOPLE and spread the word.
As I said before, some people will prefer being enslaved so long as they can mock other people - and they will think that is a sign of "intelligence."
Resistance is victory. I know who the real enemy is and I know who my allies are. Do you?
I notice you said and African man, not an African American, and there is a slight difference. It revolves around what someone pointed out above regarding generations of welfare that damage the soul. African immigrants that make it here are the brightest and the hardest working - the way mostimmigrants used to be.
I just want to point out that with the vigorous protestations you're posting, which are becoming a little shrill, it's easy for meto tell that you've never taught high school in an inner city school. As you challenge others to review their prejudices, I urge you to take a sub job (unless you're a credentialed teacher) in one. When you're done counseling weeping teachers, cleaning blood off your floor, getting yelled at for student standardized test scores, filling out police reports, removing graffiti from the halls etc, come back and tell us what you've learned. Pardon the pun, but your experiences may color you.
Vlad, thanks for the response. Your point absolutely has merit. There is no doubt that certain areas have more crime than others. There is no doubt that these areas tend to have a disproportionate number of African Americans.
I never disputed that. The facts are what they are.
I never suggested that all was fairy land, either.
What I suggested is that color of skin isn't the determining factor, hence, it doesn't really matter where someone came from if their skin color was dark brown. But, to your credit, you seem to get that there are other factors involved.
I currently work with an African American who is a Test Engineer. At a previous job, I worked with an African American who ran the quality databse for a division within the manufacturing arm of a company that produced $2 billion in product. Why should these two have to put up with all the chit about "black people" over and over and over? Talk about shrill.
Both African Americans, both nice guys. I had my bike stolen by two African Americans as a kid. My middle school was approximately 30% African American.
Again, it isn't skin color that has created the situation.
Ron Paul gets it right when he says he can't be racist because he judges INDIVIDUALS, NOT GROUPS. That's what Martin Luther King said. Character, not color of skin. That's all I'm saying.
Since you have shown the ability to think deeper than skin color, what influences over the past, say 250 years, could have produced negative standard deviation swings in education and wealth within the African American population? You shouldn't have to think to hard. Oh, and what was the root cause of those educational and wealth "impediments?"
I'll be the first to tell you that guys like Obama, Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton are nothing more than bankster shills (that's why they get press, people - if they weren't bankster shills they would get no press). I got called a racist on another thread for pointing out that Obama's BC was fake... and his draft card is fake as well. BTW, I have no idea why they are fake, just that they are fake. Youtube "Joe Arpio Obama birth certificate" if you want the details.
But not because he's black. He's a lying piece of trash because he lacks character and has sided with the international banking cartel over individual humanity.
Jackson and Sharpton are all about causing racial division and strife, but they pretty much remain silent when the Central State is abusing African Americans - kicking pregnant women, face planting wheel chair bound men, etc...
You have to view reality in context. Black people aren't destroying America, the same people that have worked so hard to destroy black people are destroying America. This is VERITAS. It is TRUTH. We need African Americans to side with liberty and against tyranny and b*ing about them as a group all day isn't recommended in "How to Win Friends and Infulence Others."
I realize there are very real issues in many black communities, but I'd argue that various inequities throughout the ages are the determining factor, NOT SKIN COLOR.
Yet some people can't wrap their mind around anything beyond skin color.
We have to elevate our game or else we all will be taken down and those "inequities" will be visited on you and yours, as well as me and mind, and we'll see how everyone responds.
IMHO, when the "inequity" is visited on America as whole, the "black ghettos of old" will likely be a fond memory to many white communities.
BTW, Africa isn't "backwards" because the people are "backwards" or "sub human," they have simply been denied the energy required to develop (by the international banking cartel). This has all been by design in order to keep their populations down. Read up on Kissinger and population control.
Watch "A Film Unfinished" and the "Empire in Africa" on Netflix and then consider if the African nations aren't being treated much like Hitler treated the people in the Warsaw Ghetto.
Limit resources, limit energy... create environment conducive to starvation and despair. Is it really any different? Who is to blame, the starved and the desperate OR THE ARCHITECTS OF THE SYSTEM?
Even a knuckle dragging racists should pay attention BECAUSE THE VERY SAME PEOPLE THAT SET UP AFRICA HAVE NOW TURNED THEIR WEAPONS OF MASS DEBT ONTO AMERICA - YOU AND YOURS, ME AN MINE!
“Shake off all fears of servile prejudices, under which weak minds are servilely crouched. Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call on her tribunal for every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a God, because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason than that of blindfolded fear.”
? Thomas Jefferson
i'z gonna be prezident
look - that's part of what keeping the rioting from taking place. the dream that is even less of
a chance than powerball - they become the next nba superstar. check the odds, they are actually less.
Or when the score needed to get into college is different depending on what race you are you know there is trouble.
The sick irony was that CA used to have some of th ebest schools in the nation before it went turd world thanks to liberalism.
That's a great photo Freddie. California colleges have sexier female students and it costs less to take them out. BTW is that you or your mother?
California schools tanked after being starved for funds - limits on property taxes, housing values locked in at purchase price......
Nonsense, they arent starved for funds. CA ranked 27th on per capita spending per student yet they still get beaten on virtually every performance metric by all the states below them.
Table 11-
http://www2.census.gov/govs/school/09f33pub.pdf
starved for funds!! Are you kidding me? Have you driven around California and looked at the High Schools they've built in the last 10 years? When you see these schools being built you initially wonder if Apple or Google are building a new campus for some special research project. You can tell by the construction that money is literally being thrown at these projects.
Then, when you walk on the campus after it's built...you ask "what is this building?" and the tour guide says "that's the admin building." And the "admin building" looks like an office complex that would probably contain 50 offices. Then you reflect on your own experience in high school, or junior high, or elementary school...and you ask "what in the hell do all those administrators do?" And if your with someone who really knows, you come to realize that the "admin building" is just full of government parasites who ALL make way too much money and add practically nothing to the overall education process.
I went to a large "by student headcount" California elementary school that had who knows how many teachers, but beyond teachers it had A janitor, A principal, A school secretary, A "nurse" that came in a couple hours in the morning and then..the ladies that worked in the cafeteria. That same school today has at LEAST 12 MORE employees that are NOT directly involved in classroom teaching. It's insane.
Schools do some great things and this is how they use the heart and little children to line their own pockets. But all evil governments through history have done great things. That's part of the propaganda machine and California will go down.
Starved for funds... what a joke. The colleges need to go on the internut - pay a teacher once to make a VID for GE classes; no pension either. Textbooks into a central share library. I would suggest some sort of techincal training - we had the ROP when I was a kid for students that were not very smart or wanted to be mechancs and shit.
Ant t oANtfas... you are right about the schools and all the students going into many of them are brown. You have large HH of illegals paying little or no taxes (and F*ck that sales tax argument) just burying the municipalities and school districts
Regarding Kalifornia real estate.....whatever....
Just keep your ass in Kalifornia. We don't want you moving to Montana where you want to make it like Kalifornia, e.g. paving our dirt roads, all sorts of "rules" and "regulations", more gun laws, gate more roads to protect wildlife, etc. etc. ad naseum
Just stay the fuck where you are.
In the East its the Notherners that do the same thing, particularly New Englanders. After ruining where they live they head below the Mason Dixon and bring their disease with them, doing their best to turn wherever they go into the same over regulated nanny state hellhole they left. They are the equivalent of human plague rats, spreading the virus of decay as they move.
They are the equivalent of human plague rats, spreading the virus of decay as they move.
They are EXACTLY the same as foreigners moving here,and trying to set up a safer version of where they came from, and then try and make US institute their laws, rules,and regs...............then get pissed whehn they run into problems doing it.Then resorting to violence.
The Old adage of When in Rome, should still universally apply............DO NOT be a stupid dik, and move elsewhere, and try and change decades of mores, and values, and political beliefs.
If you do,you should be hung.
I promise to bring my borderline anarcho-capitalist mindset with me when I finally get my family out of this cesspit. Shooting for Idaho, though, not Montana. Believe it or not, Commiefornia is filled with us, just spread out thin in the metro areas and concentrated in the rural areas. I'd say it's a 55/45 split, just enough to keep the more libertarian-minded out of the legislature.
CA reminds me of PA - "conservative" state with small, deep pockets of liberal voters (urban areas). The real fight is not Left Coasts vs middle but urban vs rural. When urban areas can deliver 80% votes with margins of hundreds of thousands (or millions), an offsetting force is needed. And the driving force behind urban voting Academia and MSM, of course.
All the more reason why California needs to be split up into four or more states. The differences between San Francisco, Los Angeles, Eastern, and Northern California (as in north of Sacramento) are staggering, and a single state government can no longer govern effectively. Let SF and LA spend themselves into oblivion as independent socialist paradises.
Yeah it is really sad. If it wasn't for the sh*t in the cities and wealth suburbs of those cities - it is a fairly conservative state - even now!
I cannot think of a state with such F'ed Up wealth distribution. You have celebs, movie people, plastic surgeons, lawyers, reality star whores, tech brats with stock options and technology jobs, unionized govt millionaire "workers" and the rest who are struggling like sheep to slaughter. The rich and starving. Like...Mexico!
At the school where I went to in California, nothing was more telling than driving through the faculty parking lots - nothing but Mercedes and Lexuses. This in a so called public college
+1
A few colleges like engineering and other things generally have qualified people. The others are probably semi-illiterate especially the "education" department. It is all about getting like minded marxist pals a cushy gig. The Ward Churchills and Elizabeth Warrens who claim they are American Indians.
The kids and their parents get screwed along with taxpayers. Colleges suck in so much govt money it is insane. They make loan sharks look ethical.
all economies are managed, didn't you know?
http://expose2.wordpress.com
Can I come there if I promise not to change your rules? I am wishing for less rules.
+1 million
This parasites wrecked OR, WA, - wrecking ID, WY MT, NM, CO. The scum escaping KaliPornia are all the progeny or offspring of Charlie Manson.
The state was invaded by liberal NE scum like Boxer, Pelosi, Waxman, Feinstein and other vermin in the 1950s/1960s. One minute we had Jack Webb and then it turned into Charlie and La Raza.
Freddie: The real question is why didn't the locals fight the invasion back then...or even now?
The inability/unwillingness to fight back is what seals the fate of conservatism (classic Liberalism, if you will).
I take it you've never heard of Prop 187? Know nothing about CA? Take a look at the link:
California_Proposition_187_(1994)
In CA we fought like a one-legged man in a butt kicking contest to get this thing through. It SWEPT the state - look at the county roll call map: Only SEVEN voted against it. It was thrown out by judicial fiat and after that TPTB realized they had to do some serious demographic irrigation. The Great CA became the Late Great CAat that point.
I get very sick of people bagging on CA without knowing anything about it. Liberal? CA sent Nixon and Reagan to the WH! This liberal and demographic takeover has only happened in the last 20 years.
The locals did fight. They worked to pass ballot inititives and the liberals would take it to some liberal judge and the judge would through it out. One judge overruling the wishes of voters and taxpayers. Sick.
The real turning point here was during Governor Moonbeam's first tenure in office, when he allowed state workers to unionize. Now we have an entrenched union with no one on the other side of the bargaining table. It'll get real ugly when CALSTRS and CALPERS detonate and there's no money to pay them despite court orders.
I won't buy property here just for the very real possibility that Prop. 13 will be repealed. I am absolutely convinced that Sacramento will drive people out of their homes rather than bring state spending in line with revenue, or give up any power bestowed upon the SEIU.
Moonbean want to build a bullet train to nowhere, this is his answer to employment? And solar? I hope the Legis killed that bullettrain for God's sake. They should have extended his taxes on vehicles, etc though.
Sad but true. Didn't they put Moonbeams old man in twice as well as Moonbeam. Sick. They will drive people from their homes. We own nothing - we rent it from the state. Don't pay their confiscatory taxes - they will take your property away from you.
I think if Fukashima 4 tips over then it will be game over anyway.
Spot on.
They went fascist when the people voted down gay marriage...only to have the "court" declare the vote unconstitutional.
Next up: excessive "ownership" (too many acres or dollars).
I am in the Bay Area of northern California (not SF). The house next to my Mom's went for $1.1 million about 6 months ago. Three houses in my in-laws neighborhood sold over the last two months before being shown. All over a mil. They are all track homes. I was driving to a friends house and was suddenly trapped by dozens of cars in the tiny court he lived on. A house there was for sale and had an actual open house. It was mayhem, I went and looked. Cash offers being made right then and there.
On the other hand, another friend is underwater on a 1.6 million dollar home that I suspect will never sell for even a million. Another house near me just listed for 1.119mil, when a year ago they listed for 1.349mil and got no offers. I doubt they will get any interest.
In California it is Location, Location, Location. But unlike in the past being close to a good location and hoping upgrades would make you part of the desirable area is not selling. The 1.119mil mentioned above would already have sold if it was 1 block to the south.
A friend sent a pic of a house he bought near SF for slightly less than a million. It looked like a damn doll house. Seriously, I thought at first it was a miniature blown up to resemble the real thing. And less than half an acre. Yet it was a "good deal" because the price had been reduced! Where do real people live who are not consultants, engineers, movie stars or union workers on the dole? And what do they do if they have a family (he's divorced - no kids)
Location, location, location... School District, School Dirisct, School Distirct... If you have 2 kids in private school at $12k per nino per ano; thats supports almost $450k in mortagge debt. If you have tres ninos, thats approaching $700k - and in a school ditrict, there will be other parents along when its time to sell.
N. Bay, S. Bay, East Bay? I guess these libs do not want to live to close to Oakland.
If they do they're nestled up in the Oakland Hills or in gated communities in Berkeley, well insulated from the hordes below.