"It was inevitable that prices would start to drop"

From the Sacramento Bee:

Federal intervention in the financial system could wipe billions of dollars in bad mortgage debt off the books of Wall Street. But will it help end the housing crisis in Sacramento?

Not directly, analysts say. But eventually it could help curb the defaults and foreclosures at the root of economic problems locally and the nation as a whole...The Sacramento region – Amador, El Dorado, Nevada, Placer, Sacramento, Sutter, Yolo and Yuba counties – recorded more than 21,000 foreclosures from January 2007 through the first half of 2008, according to MDA DataQuick, a La Jolla property researcher.

From the Sacramento Business Journal:

In Greater Sacramento, non-residential private construction is down 26.7 percent [in the first seven months of the year YoY], including industrial buildings, offices and hotels...Companies such as HMH have been heading for the safety of public projects as the economy falters and financing for offices, shopping centers and condos has dried up.
...
There are signs, however, that taxpayer-funded construction is also starting to decline under the strain of the economy. And that means competition could escalate...“There’s not going to be a lot of state funding for education projects,” said Phil Nemeth, managing principal at HMC Architecture, an Ontario-based firm that concentrates on schools and health care facilities. That’s because a state pool of education bond funding is evaporating with no plans to replace it. “We’re expecting that in March of next year that bond money will run out,” Nemeth said. “A lot of districts are relying on locally funded bonds.”

From the Manteca Bulletin:

The average previously owned home closing escrow in Manteca is costing $180,000 less than it did at the market's peak in 2005. There were 705 homes that have closed escrow through Monday within the City of Manteca with an average sales price of $249,456. That compares to the peak average price in 2005 of $429,000.

From the Stockton Record:

[San Joaquin] county unemployment sits at 2.4 percent higher than the 7.8 percent jobless rate for August 2007, and that's a direct reflection of how the real estate downturn and resulting financial crisis has pounded employment in those sectors, EDD market analyst Liz Baker said. Year to year, construction is down by 2,100 jobs, and real estate and financial employment has declined by 1,000 jobs, the EDD's report indicated.

From The Moderate Voice:

Of course, as long as the housing prices continued to go up, then people would be able to refinance and get out of the bad loans. But nothing lasts forever and, as we saw, a once a housing glut started to develop, it was inevitable that prices would start to drop. But in the Central Valley, we had an additional problem.

Because most people had purchased new homes with no money down, they had no stake in the property. In addition, many of them were urban transplants who felt (and I’ve had people say this to my face) that living in the Central Valley was ‘beneath them’.. So you had huge numbers of people simply give up and not fight to save the house.

Again, I think that this is one area where some blame is to be assigned. People knew they were getting into risky loans and, in the case of the transplants, they didn’t make any effort to save the house. However I understand that money only goes so far and I wouldn’t fight to save a home in a place I didn’t like.