patrick.net

LOL, I guess this was not the news some of you wanted to read. Just remember that sticking one's head into the sand did no good for those who denied the existence of the real~estate bubble. It will do no good for those who have been preaching that real~estate will be worthless for decades to come and that no one will ever want to buy real~estate again. You know who you are: the one's who have been saying that the West~side of Los Angeles would become available for 80's prices. The one's saying they are waiting to buy in 2011. 2011 may be a bit too late and you may not be able to buy that house in Old Bel Air for $850K after all.

I must say, I kinda like that story: I'm kinda tired of reading bad economic news and I'm ready for some positive reports on housing, for a change.

Yeah..Yeah..Keep dreaming. I am not predicting the bottom, but all I know is in bay area(where I live and would like to buy), we are not even close to the bottom. May be other places in nation, sure, not here. This article is nothing but:

@ dont_getit

I agree with you. You shouldn't buy ANYTHING until 2015 or later. Bay area housing will go back to 70's prices. You will have your pick of houses on SeaCliff, Russian Hill or any neighborhood you want. Why you will probably be able to buy a 5K square foot mansion in Pacific Heights for 100K or less.

Just make sure you don't buy anything yet wait a good 3,4 or 5 years for the bottom to really settle in. :P

I notice in todays newspaper they are suddenly hyping the "end" of the housing collapse and using the same
"buy now before it's to late" language they used at the height of the bubble.
It's like a pre-fabricated public relations campaign where somebody gave the order to start the hype
everywhere at once.
The idea of a "housing recovery" ignores all the millions who have lost their jobs and lost their credit
worthiness and even those who are still working who taken 10 to 15 percent pay cuts and will not be able to qualify for loans under the present much tighter conditions.
So who is supposed to buy all this property at increasing prices?
Everyone where I work has been forced to take a 10 percent pay cut for the next two years, yet the Bureau of Labor Statistics does not even collect any data on pay reductions by employers.
In fact they recently reported a 1.8 percent INCREASE in average income which
totally ignores millions of real world pay reductions and distorts the data for all other calculations.

I think I'll wait and take my chances and see what happens after the Alt-A resets start hitting the banks, thanks all the same - seeing as I would be stupid to buy one of the over-prices houses in MV area anyway, might as well wait and see if the prices will drop some more.

Before I broke out the champagne I would take a look at this chart from calculated risk.

I'm all for good news, but if a statistically meaningless one month bump in 5 years of data is best result we get from all trillions of BORROWED dollars being dumped into the system, not to mention massive political manipulation of the system, then I'm not that impressed. Somewhere the stimulation has to end because we can't continue to borrow unprecedented amounts of money forever. What we have done is shift massive unsustainable borrowing from individuals to the government. No country in history has borrowed it's way to prosperity unless the money was used as an investment in infrastructure, like the US did in the late 1800's.

I agree with Claire, all the garbage has to shake out first. There will be a bottom, there is always a bottom. Some places may even be there now. But a lot of places aren't.

True, but when you’ve got bidding wars for foreclosures in places like Las Vegas, Phoenix and Los Angeles, it’s time to call the bottom.

Look at the price differences though - hell even I'm tempted to buy a house in AZ when they are so cheap - $100-200,000 for a 2500 sqft house!!!

Maybe some of you not in the Bay Area don't realize this but house prices in Mountain View in an okay school district are priced at +/- $1,000,000 (1300 sqft) - that is not a sustainable price. The housing market may be at the bottom for AZ, but definietly not the Bay Area.