Tuesday, April 10, 2007

Affordable alternative?




Looking back at the posts from the Californian on affordability ties in with the story from today's LA Times on the Lancaster/Palmdale areas. These areas were crushed in the 90's in the last run up, which was not a bubble. They will fare much worse this time around (if that's possible to even fathom) as the amount of speculation is much worse. These areas ran up this time, as they did the last time around, because they were considered an "affordable" alternative. As expected they are already feeling some serious pain:

John Rockey has been hanging drywall for 35 years, and he's seen it all in the boom-again, bust-again Antelope Valley housing market.

As residential construction flourished in the late 1980s, his company's ranks swelled to 200 — then shriveled to five when the economy tanked a couple of years later.

By the time a new building spree peaked in 2005, Rockey's payroll had again grown to 200. But then came slumping home sales and a sharp rise in mortgage defaults and foreclosures.

Now, his Lancaster-based Progression Drywall Corp. is down to 50 employees, and he's got a serious case of deja vu."This is looking like 1990 all over again," he said.

For many in the high desert north of Los Angeles, those are chilling words.

"The Antelope Valley is still the last affordable place in the L.A. area," he said. "As long as the job market remains relatively strong, we'll be all right. We will survive

3 comments:

Perfect Storm said...

The real estate market down fall this time will make the nineties look like a walk in the park.


Were on track for a 50% decline by 2009.

Oh yeah for all you mortgage scum baits get the card board sign ready "will loan for food", bunch of losers.

-Fifty7- said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Unknown said...

Hello,
I have used last twelve months' median home prices and sales data for Santa Clara county to come up with some numbers ... It is clear somewhere close to 20,000 real-estate agents in SFO bay area have changed professions because of plummeting sales...The following article has the details....
One in Five Santa Clara County Real-Estate Agents is out of business

Later,
Sam