'This Might Be As Bad As I've Seen It'

From the Sacramento Bee (hat tip Gwynster):

First it was houses. Now it's cars. Motor vehicle sales fell a resounding 7.6 percent in the United States last month, and analysts said the troubled housing market was a chief culprit. That could be worrisome for an economy already showing signs of cooling off. The sales decline was particularly bad in California and Florida, two states feeling the worst of the housing downturn. That was no coincidence.
...
First, consumers who had been tapping their home equity to buy cars during the housing boom are less apt to do so when the real estate market is soft. The shaky housing market also is having a psychological effect.

"There's consumer uncertainty. Housing is really having a big impact," said Jesse Toprak, executive director for industry analysis at the Edmunds.com car-buying Web site.

Second, building contractors are buying fewer pickups, vans and other vehicles -- a major part of the market -- for their fleets. "Suddenly your homes aren't selling -- the last thing you're going to do is go out and buy another truck," said Ron Pinelli, president of Autodata Corp., a market research firm based in New Jersey.

Beutler Corp., a big Sacramento-based heating and cooling contractor, normally buys 20 or 30 pickups and other vehicles a year. But this year, Beutler might not buy any -- not after having trimmed its payroll in half, to about 900 workers, since 2005. "You don't need new trucks for expansion," said Rick Wylie, the contracting firm's president. "We've got some trucks parked."
...
"So many car sales in California are home equity-based," [auto analyst Art] Spinella said. "Less equity, less money."
...
Geoff Pleau of Future Automotive Group, which runs a string of foreign and domestic dealerships in the Central Valley, said the health of the housing market is crucial. "We always follow what home sales are doing compared to automobile sales, and they kind of go hand in hand," Pleau said.

Also from The Bee (hat tip Cmyst):

An Auburn man pleaded guilty Thursday to defrauding a bank of more than $1 million, according to federal court records. Christopher M. Craig, 35, is in custody without bail in the Sacramento County jail awaiting sentencing July 19 before United States District Judge Morrison C. England, Jr. Craig faces 30 years in prison. Although most of the federal records in the case remain under seal, Craig admitted Thursday to promising loans to people on the verge of losing their homes to foreclosure, prosecutors said in a news release. In the process, he would provide documents that deeded away people's homes to co-defendants, who then applied for home loans from Washington Mutual Bank.
...
The bank gave Craig $1.2 million, but Craig paid back some of the loan, ultimately defrauding the bank of $974,452, prosecutors said. The homes were in Auburn, Lincoln, Stockton, Elk Grove, Sacramento and Manteca.

From the Stockton Record:

After some hope that existing-home sales were on the rise, the market slowed again last month, leaving some brokers and agents expecting a long downturn. Sales of existing homes in San Joaquin County had jumped from 265 in February to 363 in March but sagged again to 273 last month, according to figures from the latest Coldwell Banker Grupe-TrendGraphix monthly sales report, based on Multiple Listing Service data.

The median sales price also slipped for the third consecutive month, sliding from $385,000 in March to $380,000 in April [and down 9.5% yoy per chart].

"Dead" was how Mike Collins, of Century 21 Collins, Stockton, described to market these days. "It's just not coming back. This might be as bad as I've seen it." He said his agents reported maybe six lookers stopping by to check out any of the dozen open houses over the weekend.

Collins said he's puzzled by the continued slowness of the market, with the economy doing OK, employment solid and mortgage interest rates still traditionally low. He suspects that many would-be buyers still believe home prices, which have slid by single-digit percentages in the past year, are still sinking.