'Foreclosures have taken the place of new construction'

From the Sacramento Bee:

The excesses of the housing boom pushed another major Sacramento home builder and land developer on Wednesday to seek personal bankruptcy protection from creditors. Christo Bardis, co-founder of Sacramento-based Reynen & Bardis Communities, filed for Chapter 11 protection in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Sacramento, the development firm announced. He listed liabilities of $100 million to $500 million and assets between $10 million and $50 million.
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Most of the millions of dollars now owed by Bardis and Reynen were used to pay for thousands of acres of land that have since collapsed in value. "Both he and John Reynen … backed a lot of these deals with their personal fortunes," said Dean Wehrli, a vice president with the consulting firm Sullivan Real Estate Advisors. "They were way, way too hungry for land during the good years and even a little bit beyond. … They were still buying even after it was obvious that things were changing."

From the CVBT:

For landlords, it’s not been a year of contemplating vacations in Bora Bora. The average rent per square foot in the Central Valley in the third quarter was $1.11, a penny higher than in 2007 [according to RealFacts].

From the Stockton Record:

San Joaquin County home construction remains in the doldrums, based on the latest building permit figures from the Construction Industry Research Board. The Burbank-based research board reported that in the first nine months of 2008, county builders took out 641 permits for single-family homes valued at a total $143 million. During the same period of 2005, the height of the housing bubble, local governments issued nearly eight times as many home building permits, 4,976 in all, with a value of $1.17 billion.
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John Beckman, executive officer of the Building Industry Association of the Delta, said area home builders at looking at 2010 for any upswing in activity. "Foreclosures have taken the place of new construction," he said Tuesday, noting that there's probably a year's worth of inventory - foreclosure homes being actively marketed or simply vacant - that needs to be absorbed at current sales rates.

From the Sacramento Bee:

U.S. automakers' efforts to streamline operations continue to chip away at Sacramento area new-car dealerships. On Wednesday, Chrysler Jeep of Elk Grove said it is ceasing new-car sales as part of a consolidation buyout, but the site will remain in business as a large-scale used car lot.

Forbes: America's Worst Bang For The Buck Cities - #10 Sacramento

From the Mercury News (hat tip HBB):

[CAR chief economist Leslie Appleton-Young] predicts the median price of the houses sold statewide next year will be $358,000, down 6.0 percent from $381,000, which is CAR's estimated median price for all of 2008.
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She acknowledges that her calculations for 2008 turned out to be wrong by a longshot...[F]or the median price, it was forecast to drop just 4 percent. Now, Appleton-Young estimates the state's median house price for 2008 will be 31.7 percent lower than in 2007.

Why such a big gap in forecast versus reality? "What we missed was the credit crunch at the high end in the jumbo market," Appleton-Young said. She noted that she was working on last year's forecast just as financing for jumbo loans began to tighten, but the full effects weren't yet evident in September 2007.

Stephen Levy, an economist at the Center for Continuing Study of the California Economy, in Palo Alto, said the Realtors' forecast for 2009 is "at the optimistic end of plausible. Last year they were clearly wrong," he said, and he questioned Appleton-Young's prediction in CAR's report Wednesday that a California recession could end by the second half of 2009.