Placer County Layoffs
From the Sacramento Bee:
Citing a stagnant housing market, Placer County announced today that it will lay off eight employees in its building department. In addition, other employees in the department will be asked to consider filling different jobs at lower salaries.From the Sacramento Bee:
Local car dealerships are closing, new-vehicle sales are down, gas prices remain high and a credit crunch is squeezing both auto dealers and consumers...First-quarter sales of 26,975 vehicles in the Central Valley are down 23.2 percent compared with the first three months of 2007.
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[T]he trade-in aspect of the business is likely more alarming to customers looking to downsize their vehicles and gas bills. "Some trucks and SUVs are going for 50 percent of the Kelley Blue Book wholesale value," [Peter] Welch [president and chief executive of the Sacramento-based California New Car Dealers Association] said. "Consumers are not getting the expected value on a trade-in, and even without it, they're finding negative equity."
7 comments:
Would expect nothing less when the area is experiencing a recession.
On the national front new housing starts up 9.1%. Wow that's big rise until you get into the details to find that New York City enacted a building code change that pushed their starts over 11%. Take that number out and starts were down 4% across the board. Talking heads are spinning the markets higher on nothing but smoke and mirrors.
Sac town back to August 2002!
WOW!!
Perfect Storm and the rest of us may have been too bullish. :)
Nah remember the wage growth was 96 to 99. Speculation began in late 97. Over correcting would be to 99 prices, not 01. Brace yourselves.
rental rates are increasing dramatically in the Bay Area- 7-8% in the past year!
Won't this eventually hit the Central Valley? Compared to renting in many areas buying seems to be a no brainer on a savings standpoint. The only scary thing is knowing in the short term your house can continue to over correct in price.
Luca,
Site your data source. With a declining population, who are the people renting? There is a huge difference between asking and what people actully get. With all the excess housing in the Valley (including condo converts) I would expect rents to start to fall. The outmigration is continuting and will soon accelerate. I don't know if you saw it but offical unemployment (understated as usual) numbers just shot up to +6.5%.
I have heard from others that rents are going up - usually from landlords - as much as rents are going down - usually from renters, but other than anedotes , no one can point me to a reliable data source
rmb- it was in the SF Examiner.
San Mateo County was up 8.5% and San Jose is up 6.5%
also check out www.burbed.com where bay area residents are seeing rapid rises in rents as well.
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