"The Deep Pockets...Are Suddenly Empty"

From the Sacramento Bee:

There's a grinch in town this year, emptying the Christmas stockings of poor children and taking the food off family tables. But the culprit isn't a green fellow whose heart is two sizes too small – Sacramento's villain has no heart at all. It's the weak economy, Virginia, and it has the people who run holiday toy and food drives panicky as needs grow and donations dwindle.
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It's a common refrain, said Steve Heath, president of United Way/California Capital Region. "I'm hearing the same thing everywhere – it's a tough year for getting food and for getting toys," Heath said. "Part of it is the local economy. Anyone who works in the housing industry is struggling....

In the Sacramento region, the deep pockets of some philanthropic developers are suddenly empty. "Developers are going through very challenging times," said David Hosley, general manager of public television station KVIE. "Some that were very generous to us in the past can't be this year. This is what I said to one of them last week: 'Listen. We remember what you've done. We know where your heart is. And this year we understand that you can't do it.' "

From the LA Times (hat tip LA Land):

[N]obody doubts that Stockton and the rest of the Central Valley have been severely jolted. By October, foreclosures in Stockton's San Joaquin County were more than eight times last year's levels, outpacing the state's increase by 41%, according to DataQuick, a La Jolla-based information service...[S]peculators -- an estimated 40% of the home buyers in Stockton -- were buying houses in order to flip them quickly at a nice profit.
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Pete Ponce de Leon, a 50-year-old machinist, said he and his wife were barely keeping up with their monthly mortgage payments, which shot up from $1,700 a year ago to $2,500 now. He said he cashed in two IRAs, sold his tools, sold a truck and was bracing for another rate increase this month. Along the way, he lost his job, and his lender refused to cut him a break. "Why don't they just screw us all at once instead of a little at a time?" said Ponce de Leon, who has found another job and hopes to renegotiate his mortgage.

Asked whether the higher payments took them by surprise, Ponce de Leon struck the same note as many other homeowners in trouble. "We just thought we'd be OK," he said, explaining that he and his wife had planned to use what they'd expected to be the rising equity in their home to refinance the adjustable loan at a lower rate.
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Monaliza Botello, a 25-year-old nurse, said she was surprised when her father, who brings in $4,500 a month, last year secured a loan requiring a $4,000 monthly payment. The idea was that Monaliza's father would own the new $495,000 four-bedroom for a year or two, at which point she and her husband, Isaac, could afford to buy it from him with a refinanced loan. But the three of them, who were all living there, fell behind in their payments, and Monaliza lost her dream home...As home prices plunged, Botello's cousin around the corner also went into foreclosure, as did her godmother -- a real estate agent nearby. "Everyone was going, 'We can't refi? How can we afford this?' " she said. "Everyone was just shocked."

From CNBC's Realty Check:

I’m hearing some disconcerting rumblings from some builders, anecdotally speaking of course. One mid-sized private builder told a friend of mine that potential customers coming through their model-home doors are openly hostile. They’re not just looking for good deals; they’re looking for payback.

Apparently some of today’s new homebuyers blame the builders outright for the current housing predicament. They are telling unwitting sales reps that they are to blame for running up prices and foisting untenable loans on clients during the latest housing boom. Buyers are telling the sales people stories of how rudely they were treated during the boom, how they were told that if they didn’t want to take the deal they could stick it, because there was a line of buyers right behind them.

From the San Diego Union-Tribune:

Joseph Anfuso, a USD alumnus who served as chief financial officer for Shea Homes in San Diego before becoming president of Florsheim Homes in the Central Valley, said that when prospective buyers come window shopping at a development, “treat them like a rich grandfather, as if you're in the will.”

From the North County Times:

"The one thing I can tell about you Realtors is that you're all liars," said Joseph Anfuso, president of Florsheim Homes, a builder in California's Central Valley. Anfuso told agents during a Wednesday real estate conference at the University of San Diego that they need to stop inflating or hiding sales numbers and swallow a hard dose of reality on their cash flow if they expect to remain in business as sales continue to plummet.