Southern California Housing Wipeout: Prices Plunge 27% or $135,000 in the past 12 months

For those of you keeping score at home, THAT'S $370 PER DAY OR $11,250 A MONTH!

Should have rented... Should have listened to HP, and not a realtor on commission..

Thank you Lawrence Yun.

Thank you David Lereah.

Thank you Leslie Appleton-Young.

Thank you Connie DeGroot.

Thank you Mike Norman.

Thank you Tom Adkins.

Thank you to the lying, deceitful, self-serving, ignorant and now ramen-eating and forever discredited army of six percenters.

You can all go home now (if you still have a home). Your services are no longer needed.

SoCal Home Prices Plunge 27% in May

Housing prices across Southern California plunged a record 27% in May, signaling that more trouble lies ahead for builders and lenders exposed to the region.

Sales volume in the market fell 15% from a year ago, marking the slowest May in more than 20 years, according to DataQuick Information Systems.

The median price fell to $370,000 from $505,000 in the counties of Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino, San Diego and Ventura.

FLASH: The Corrupt David Lereah (TCDL) finally admits he f*cked up, housing bubble did exist, crash now underway

That's it folks. Put a fork in it. The housing bubble is dead, and even TCDL (sure miss the little guy eh?) now admits he was spewing lies.

HP note to TCDL: Your lies and spin ruined lives. You are a shameful, corrupt little man who knowingly enriched himself at the expense of America. History will not be kind to you or to your replacement stooge Lawrence Yun.

Perhaps the most prominent housing booster was David Lereah, the chief economist at the National Association of Realtors until April. In 2005, he published a book titled, “Are You Missing the Real Estate Boom?” In 2006, it was updated and rereleased as “Why the Real Estate Boom Will Not Bust.” This year, Mr. Lereah published a new book, “All Real Estate Is Local.”

In an interview, Mr. Lereah, now an executive at Move Inc., which operates a real estate Web site, acknowledged he had gotten it wrong, saying he did not fully realize how loose lending standards had become and how quickly they would tighten up again this summer. But he argued that many of his critics have also been proved wrong, because they were bearish as early as 2002.

“The bears were bears way too early, and the bulls were bulls too late,” he said. “You need to know when you are straying from fundamentals. It’s hard, when you are in the middle of the storm, to know.”

Go back to the height of housing bubble frenzy in 2004 - 2006: do you rememember what housing panic looked like (on the buying side)?

Remember the people camping outside of new home developments?

Remember all the people taking real estate license classes?

Remember HP'ers being called brown shirts, flying monkeys, bitter renters, bubble heads, pollyannas, chicken littles and worse?

Remember being told "they're not making any more land" and "if you don't buy now you may be priced out of the market forever"?

Remember all the flipper and home improvement shows on A&E?

Remember George Bush calling for everyone to own a home (regardless of the ability to pay or price)?

Remember David Lereah and his "Why the Real Estate Boom Will Not Bust" book?

Do you remember? Good. Because next time the madness of crowds takes over, run the other way.

The NAR is still serving the Kool-Aid. Anyone want another sip?

Liars. Scoundrels. Terrible businessmen. Discredited hacks. Watching the NAR implode at the same time housing implodes is quite poetic, wouldn't you say HP'ers?

I think the only ones still drinking their Kool-Aid are the rip-and-read MSM, and even many of them are starting to actually think before they write. Not all of 'em, but some. It's a start.

But here's the reporter at Realty Times allowing the NAR spinmeisters to serve more unfiltered Mountainberry Punch! Hey Kool-Aid!

NAR Says Existing Home Sales Have Hit Bottom

Despite wailing from banks that late or non-payments on sub-prime loans are sinking their profits, continuing fear from homebuyers that they're catching a falling knife, and predictions from housing analysts that the pain is far from over, the outlook looks sunny for housing, says the National Association of Realtors.

Analysts say that a number of causes kept buyers away including affordability, the financial media, rising gas prices, rising mortgage interest rates, and buyers' fear of becoming "the greater fool."

Housing bulls suggest that the drop in housing sales is primarily due to fear -- that housing fundamentals are actually better now than they were during record housing conditions.

David Lereah, NAR's chief economist, said it appears the fourth quarter was the bottom for the current housing cycle.

"This information confirms 2006 was the year of contraction, and hopefully the fourth quarter was the bottom of this current business cycle," he said. "Home sales are leveling at historically high levels, and examination of data within the quarter shows home prices stabilizing toward the end. When we get the figures for this spring, I expect to see a discernible improvement in both sales and prices."

NAR President Pat V. Combs: "Since the typical owner stays in a home for six years, it's more useful to look at the five-year comparison for metro area home prices -- most of them are seeing strong gains,"

Anyone believe the "we've hit bottom" statements of Bob Toll, Alan Greenspan or David Lereah now?

Corrupt, clueless and discredited.

Unfortunately the only one with a reasonable chance of jail time would be Mr. Insider Stock Sales Himself, Bob Toll.

Lereah, like the nazis, was "just doing his job".

And Greenspan? Just incompetent. Unfortunately stupidity isn't a crime.

Real estate clerks suck. The NAR sucks. The MLS sucks. Google rocks. Zillow rocks. Fix this already!

Say it with me real estate clerks:

Dis
In
Ter
Me
Di
A
Tion

Disintermediation.

Disintermediation.

Home shoppers do their hunting online

Already, 80% of buyers used the Internet to help find a home, according to the National Association of Realtors. Day by day, new real estate tools are surfacing on the Web.
Technology is shifting knowledge and power to buyers and sellers.

In doing so, it's loosening Realtors' long-standing control of vital information and cutting into their sales commissions. For more than 100 years, Realtors have guarded the details of homes for sale via their multiple listing services. At least 900 regional MLS systems exist nationwide. Unless the MLS systems become more open, unified and technologically sophisticated, they risk being replaced by a Web search engine.

"The Internet is a significant threat to Realtors, who in previous decades have had iron-grip control over all necessary information for those seeking to buy or sell a home," says Stuart Gabriel of the University of Southern California's Lusk Center for Real Estate.

Signs of upheaval in the industry were evident by late 2005, when the Justice Department filed an antitrust lawsuit against the National Association of Realtors. Justice wants the Realtors to stop letting brokers withhold for-sale listings from low-cost Internet rivals.

The Realtors' policy is on hold. But Brian McDonald, a deputy assistant attorney general for the antitrust division, says the policy's restrictions still exert "a chilling effect in the market" because some companies won't risk introducing new Internet business strategies if they could be undercut in the future.

The Justice Department, meantime, is moving forward with its antitrust case against the NAR. The Realtors are fighting back. They argue that the broker should control the information about the seller's home and decide how to share that information and with whom.