Comments on: Real Homes of Genius: Today we Salute you Santa Monica. When the Westside Comes Crumbling Down.

By: Joseph

Joseph — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 16:42:10 +0000

Hello Doc,

I appreciate your site and its humor. Seriously, you make some great points here, but unfortunately, this particular Dewey listing is not even remotely an example of LA’s finest, either in Santa Moncia or Los Angeles, either in terms of house style condition/style or location. As you pointed out, the home is an absolute joke, in every sense. The house sits on the edge of Santa Monica as you travel toward venice/LA and sites on an awful lot, with essentially no yard and at the intersection of busy winding roads and, more importantly, at the end of the Santa Monica Airport runway. This house is really almost as bad as it gets and I would agree with you, it’s a joke, though a sad one. Even sadder is the fact that this home sold for 675K and likely should have sold for considerably less. Bottom line, I agree with much of your commentary, but this home really ins’t a fine example to use in demonstrating your point of values in Santa Monica, given so many others would have better and more objectively proven many of your points. Thank you for allowing me to comment.

By: Lee Lee J

Lee Lee J — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 09:59:42 +0000

Time for a Real Homes of Genius story about overpriced places in West Hollywood: http://www.ziprealty.com/buy_a_home/logged_in/search/home_detail.jsp?property_type=CONDO&source=CLAW&cKey=66wc68n3&page=2&listing_num=08_278133&mls=mls_so_cal
The price of the condos at 917 N Sierra Bonita have been dropped from $963,088 to $499,999 in just 167 days!

By: LA nightmare

LA nightmare — Sun, 19 Oct 2008 23:37:03 +0000

Los Angeles is a nightmare. The extreme example of what slavery to the automobile will lead to. My value of this house: you would have to pay me $100K a year to live there.

By: Jackie

Jackie — Sun, 19 Oct 2008 07:28:09 +0000

Realtors have caused a lot of the problems…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hv9hSLtEwOM

Read the comments on the video too – very interesting.

By: blutown

blutown — Sat, 18 Oct 2008 23:48:00 +0000

Since this tread is mostly about sharing data, here’s some to ponder:
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“There are 129 million housing units in the United States, comprising owner-occupied, rented, and vacant units. Of these, 18.5 million are empty. This vacancy rate is 2.5 percentage points higher than it has been at any point in the half century the data have been tracked, translating into at least 3 million too many empty housing units in the country. This number, moreover, is rising. This is the most intractable part of the real estate bubble, for we cannot find a true bottom to home prices until this inventory of empty units starts to clear, and we cannot find a bottom to the mortgage finance market until home prices bottom out.” -It’s Only Going to Get Worse, Everything you always wanted to know about the housing crash, but were afraid to ask.
by Lawrence B. Lindsey
The Weekly Standard
06/09/2008, Volume 013, Issue 37
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Obviously, we have an epic supply/demand imbalance. One metric worth watching is homeownership rate. It peaked at a historical high of 69.2% in 2004 and averaged about 64% since 1960 according to data from Wikipedia. Just to get back to the trend line, we have to loose about 6.45 Million homeowners. That’s a lot of deadbeat loans! And we are likely to overshoot it given the economic precipice we are at. Any elaboration by Comrade Dr. Housing Bubble would be appreciated. Understanding when supply and demand will come into some historical norms will be key to finding a bottom.
~
Despite this, there is no lack of voodoo government rescue planning to put a “floor” under housing prices. Here’s a gem from the NYT:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/18/business/18nocera.html?em