'Change or Die'

From the SF Chronicle:

[A] subdued, and noticeably smaller, throng of West Coast building professionals gathered at Moscone Center this week for the annual Pacific Coast Builders Conference and trade show. Only 18,000 to 20,000 people are in San Francisco for the event, which just two years ago drew about 35,000.
...
"We get (potential buyers) with the mind-set: I want to pay this price because I can buy a foreclosed home up the street," said Bill Misura, a sales associate with Tim Lewis Communities in Roseville (Placer County). He was among 30 attendees who paid an extra $395 for a daylong session called "Marketing boot camp for a new era: Competing for today's elusive buyers."

From the Mercury News:

Some of the week's conference sessions have titles such as "How to Sell Homes in a Down Market," "Leadership in the Face of Adversity," and "Change or Die."

From the Stockton Record:

California Building Industry Association...chief economist Alan Nevin...blamed the record number of foreclosures and short sales for depressing the market for new homes, but he also said rising high fuel prices have knocked commuters out of the inland housing market from Sacramento to Riverside/San Bernardino. "Folks are no longer willing to make that long drive, even though that house may be $100,000 less," Nevin said. "You can't justify it when the fuel (to commute) costs $1,000 a month." That will hamper recovery prospects, with future inland home construction growth being fed primarily by new jobs, he said.

From the Appeal Democrat:

In the market for a fuel-efficient car? How about a brand new Toyota Yaris with the purchase of a new home? That's the deal developers of the River's Edge community in Knight's Landing are offering potential buyers this weekend..."Our (home) prices are reduced too," said Mark Westphal, owner of Westphal Group. "We find a need and fill a need."
...
River's Edge is a 67-lot community that offers three home styles of up to five bedrooms in Knights Landing. Knights Landing is a tiny farming community of 846 on Highway 113 just across the Sacramento River from Sutter County.

From the Sacramento Business Journal:

The median price of an existing, single-family home in Greater Sacramento was $233,230 in May, a 34.5 percent fall from the price in May 2007....The region's home price drop was slightly better than the statewide average, where the median home price fell 35.3 percent in May compared to the previous year, the California Association of Realtors reported...In Sacramento, sales were up 76 percent from May 2007....

From the Sacramento Bee:

Statistics show that thousands of...[pay option ARM] loans were made in the capital region. In 2005, pay option ARMs were 18.7 percent of all purchase loans and refinancings in El Dorado, Placer, Sacramento and Yolo counties, according to data from First American Core Logic, LoanPerformance. That rose to 26.7 percent of all loans in the first nine months of 2006, according to the firm.

From Rocklin & Roseville Today:

The Sacramento real estate market appears to have lost some of the steam it had developed earlier this spring. There are still buyers out there but the rush to buy a house has slowed. It is hard to tell exactly what is happening but with consumer confidence in the economy running very low and gas prices headed toward $5 per gallon it is surprising anyone is buying anything right now.

From the Sacramento Bee:

California is in a mild recession and has been since the last few months of 2007, according to the latest report from the University of the Pacific...Jeff Michael, director of the university's Business Forecasting Center, said the recession figures to be fairly long-lived but not severe...Sacramento-area unemployment will average 6.6 percent through 2010, he said.

From the CVBT:

"A housing market that has seen historic price drops and foreclosures is certainly a short-term negative economic influence and has created some undesirable social disruptions and property damage. However, the economic damage has not spread much beyond construction and finance sectors with much of the losses being felt out-of-state by those who financed high-risk California mortgages," it says. Mr. Michael believes the rapid price correction will get the real estate sector moving forward again "much more quickly than in previous downturns, and increased affordability will result in a long-run improvement in the state’s quality of life and business climate."