The Porta-Potty Index

From the Sacramento News & Review:

I was searching for signs of the coming economic apocalypse along the stressed seams of Sacramento’s suburban neighborhoods, and honey buckets [aka porta-potties] seemed like a perfectly reasonable place to start...It seems reasonable to expect, given rising unemployment in the construction industry, to find stacks of honey buckets piling up all over the country. We might point to this excess as an indicator of reduced economic activity, a honey-bucket index, if you will.
...
After the real-estate bubble popped 18 months ago, the porta-potties began stacking up at the rental place [my Dad] drives by on the way into town [Redding]. Nowadays, so many honey buckets have been returned, they’re stacking them outside the fence. Surely, my father speculated, the same phenomenon must exist in Sacramento.

Indeed it does. At J & J Sanitation in south Sacramento, the excess toilets were stacked four-deep next to an adjacent vacant warehouse. The sweet stink of what seemed like 1,000 honey buckets wafted over the razor wire at Waste Management’s compound off Elder Creek Road. At United Site Services in north Sacramento, the porta-loos, hundreds of them, were stacked high and deep behind the security fence.

From the Chicago Tribune:

Rolling Meadows-based homebuilder Kimball Hill Homes, citing the "challenges faced by the homebuilding industry" in the housing sector's meltdown, said it filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection but will maintain normal operations while it restructures. "Our issues are financial, not operational," said President and Chief Executive Ken Love.

Kimball Hill has developments in Sacramento, Rancho Cordova, Galt, Stockton, Ceres, and Merced.

From the Sacramento Bee:

After months of wrangling with lenders over huge debts accumulated during the housing boom, prominent Sacramento-area home builder John D. Reynen filed Wednesday for personal bankruptcy protection. Reynen, co-founder of Reynen & Bardis Communities, took the action to prevent San Francisco-based Bank of the West from seizing his house and other personal assets for a $26 million debt owed by his company, said Michele McCormick, spokeswoman for the builder. She said the filing will not affect the operations of Reynen & Bardis Communities.
...
Kathryn Boyce, a Sacramento-based Hanley Wood analyst, said the firm's massive land holdings are still a source of strength. "There's still land they're sitting on they haven't done anything with," she said. "They're going to be OK."

From the Stockton Record:

Real estate was bubbling in 2004 when Regent announced its [Stockton Sheraton Hotel] plans. That year, you practically couldn't build residential developments - including condos - fast enough. Condos atop a pristine downtown development overlooking the city's redeveloped waterfront core seemed like a sure winner. In hindsight, 42 high-end condos seems a bit aggressive for the still-coming-back-from-the-dead downtown market. But back then, four whole years ago, the lines on the chart seemed to run only one direction: upward.
...
Then along came 2005. The hotel was two years from being finished, and there were disturbing signs the housing bubble had expanded about as far as it could. Nobody expected a burst, at least not of the explosive magnitude that occurred.

From the Stockton Record:

[T]he prices being charged for those new homes have been way overpriced relative to the incomes of most county residents, [director of Pacific's Business Forecasting Center Jeff] Michael said. "Despite a dramatic drop of house prices (40 percent in the past 30 months), it's still expensive to live here. It's still 4.5 times the median family income compared to the U.S. average of 3.25 times median family income," Michael said.

He went so far as to say that San Joaquin County has been in its own recession since last fall, triggered by the housing meltdown and confirmed by unemployment figures that have topped 10 percent in two of the past three months. While the housing boom that started in the early part of the decade added 7,000 jobs in construction in the county, 3,000 jobs have already been lost in the downturn.