@Anon 12:52 – Lot of California Equity Giants invested in other states. Oregon and Washington had a lot of folks taking their money up north for 2nd homes. It’ll be interesting to see what impact the declining market will have on Portland and Seattle.

@Anon 7:51 – That is correct. For $500,000 you get a Real Home of Genius here while in another state you would get a magnificent 3,000 square foot palace. But this is California remember? We make up our own rules here and bad schools, crime, and great weather are all reasons that increase the bottom line. I believe the CAR has that in their marketing brochure for SoCal.

@Anon 10:16AM – I removed HaloScan because it got rid of all previous comments. Those are great articles by the way, thank you. The one dissecting the DataQuick information is chalk full of information (i.e., looking at median increase while sales are plummeting). I briefly mentioned this in a comment and I think many people are going to be fooled by this discrepancy – that is higher priced homes moving yet lower-end homes get hammered. But seeing that most people don’t read their mortgage applications, I’m sure they can understand statistical median analysis and how this impacts the bottom line.

I do recommend the following articles (links provided) as further back-up to Dr. HB’s columns.

http://www.safehaven.com/article-7642.htm

http://www.safehaven.com/article-7652.htm

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601103&sid=as4IgwxvySmQ&refer=us