Baghdad Bob of Real Estate, Arizona Edition

From the New York Times (hat tip HBB):

Phoenix has achieved the unwelcome distinction of becoming the first major American city where home prices have fallen in half since the market peaked in the middle of the decade, according to data released Tuesday. Though historical statistics are scant, experts said the precipitous decline probably had few if any equals in modern times.
...
Greg Swann, a Phoenix real estate agent, took a moment to marvel at the news. “What happened here will some day be a new chapter in ‘Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds,’ ” the classic survey of investing mania, he said. “We were living during the boom like there was no tomorrow. And guess what? Now it’s tomorrow.”

Greg Swann, June 2006: 21 reasons to bank on the Phoenix real estate market . . .

"Realistically, how overvalued are Phoenix home prices?" Obviously, I consider this a profoundly silly question, but to lurk among the BubbleBloggers and their seething commentariat is to acquire an education in a slice of America invisible from this side of the sewer gratings.
...
We keep our own home sales price statistics, so we have no doubt that values are down from their high in December. How much? Right now, about 4%. Could they go lower? Certainly. Will they drop by the huge amounts HousingPanic and his flying monkeys seem to yearn for? This seems very unlikely. What seems much more likely is that Phoenix will recover from the hangover of last year’s buying binge and get back to a steady rate of growth — historically 6% a year. The reason this should happen is very simple: Population growth. Metropolitan Phoenix is a unique real estate market.
...
The BubbleBloggers will someday bawl balefully in private, but they will never, ever admit that they have been very publicly very foolish. You will know and I will know and in the secret chambers of their hearts they will know they were wrong all along.

A reader's response in the comments:

Garth Farkley July 29th, 2006 7:10 pm

Just remember, Greg, the internet is forever. Some of us will be right and some will be wrong. I acknowledge the possibility of my own error. In my experience humility is generally a mark of wisom. You, however, set yourself up as an icon of certitude. Good luck with it. Time will certainly tell.

Bailouts and the Bubble Bloggers

From the Weekly Standard:

There seems to be real bitterness about the idea of forcing people to subsidize the imprudent housing choices of their neighbors. That bitterness is on display on other websites, such as StopTheHousingBailout.com, which urges readers not to get stuck "paying for other people's greed & ignorance" and encourages them to lobby their congressmen.

Much of the opposition to the bailout, however, comes from people who are only tangentially interested in the politics of the matter. Beginning in 2005, hundreds of websites and blogs sprouted up warning about the housing bubble. At the time, these people were often viewed as doomsayers or cranks. Thoroughly vindicated, many of their sites are now de facto rallying points against Obama's plan, purely on grounds of economic prudence.

The blog FlippersInTrouble, for instance, gives exhaustive data on the losses being racked up by speculators in Sacramento, which won't help build sympathy for the beneficiaries of the bailout. HousingDoom.com, a site which began by looking at economic aspects of the bubble in 2006, is now saying, "What the market needs is more foreclosures." There is no obvious political pattern to the bubble bloggers. Some are freemarketeers. Others, such as those who run HousingPanic.com, are Democrats who see the bubble as one more failure of the Bush administration. Yet nearly all of the bubble sites, left, right, and center, are now lined up against the bailout.

Housing Bubble Blogs - Defunct or in Hibernation

A trip down housing bubble blog memory lane.

Amador Real Estate
Arcadia Housing Blog
Bakersfield Bubble
Baltimore Housing Bubble
Baltimore Metro Area Housing Blog
Billings Housing Market
Bubble Market Inventory Tracking
Bubble Track
BusinessWeek Hot Property
Calgarian Contrarian
DC Housing Bubble Blues
East Bay Housing Bubble
Finding Bottom
Flip This
Florida - Paradise Lost
Hawaii Housing Bubble
Hawaii Housing Real Estate Bubble
HousingPANIC
L.A. Land
Maine Housing Bubble Blog
Marin Real Estate Bubble
May 5th & Everything After
Modesto and Merced "Going Quickly"
New York City Housing Bubble: 'The Big Picture'
OC Flip Track
Original L.A. Land
Overvalued
Pacific Beach Housing Bubble Blog
Real Estate Comments (Got popcorn?)
SacramentoHousingBubble
Santa Barbara Housing Bubble Blog
Second City Bubble
Sonoma Housing Bubble
Southern Maryland Bubble News
South Florida Real Estate Bubble
The Boy in the Big Housing Bubble
The Massachusetts Housing Market
The Jersey Shore Real Estate Bubble
The (Unreal) State of Vancouver
The Walk-Through
There is no housing bubble!
Vancouver Housing Market Blog
Victoria Housing Market Blog
What bubble?

The Home Builder Implode-O-Meter & More

New to the blogroll:

The Home Builder Implode-O-Meter
The Bank Implode-O-Meter
East Bay Housing Bubble
Arcadia Housing Blog
National Bubble
Housing Fear

Phoenix Flippers in Trouble & More

Looks like Max is starting a franchise: Phoenix Flippers In Trouble


Some more recent additions to the blogroll:

Developments - WSJ.com makes sense of the housing slowdown with news, tips and analysis

Santa Barbara Housing Bubble Blog - Home price trends in southern Santa Barbara County (Goleta, Santa Barbara, Carpinteria, Santa Ynez Valley) and related topics and issues

Housing Kaboom - Watching the Inland Empire real estate market explode

Santa Monica Distress Monitor - Monitoring current real estate market conditions in Santa Monica and testing the hypothesis that Santa Monica's real estate values are subject to the forces of a currently deflating bubble.

San Diego Market Monitor - Market analysis, news and reviews of specific properties that are for sale or have sold at a loss.

Housing Bubble Hall of Shame - Who is responsible for the Housing Bubble? Policy makers, press, investors, wallstreet, mortgage lenders, builders, realtors, appraisors, buyers, flippers, sellers, ... ? They all had a hand in it, but lets pay tribute to some of the more notable or public displays of bubble mania. *All inductees are innocent of a crime until proven guilty in a court of law. *

NoBailout.org

May 5th & Everything After (San Fernando Valley)

South OC Real Estate Tracker

Sacramento Housing Blogs Mentioned in Sacramento News & Review

"For at least the past three years, the alts were the only place you could read about the burgeoning real-estate bubble that has now popped, threatening to take the rest of the economy down with it. Forget about the Sacramento Bee, which continues to push the idea that the housing downturn is a temporary glitch even as Sacramento County and the rest of California lead the nation in the number of foreclosures."
...
"Blogging the bubble: Fortunately, readers can get the straight dope at the frothy host of local blogs and Web sites that have appeared in the wake of the collapsing bubble. For a daily update on regional housing bubble news, try sacramentolanding.blogspot.com. One of the more amusing blogs, at least for non-homeowners, is flippersintrouble.blogspot.com, which posts the prices of homes as they sell, charting both the number of days on the market and percent discount in asking price."

"How’s $451K sound for a four bedroom home in Elk Grove that languished on the market for 350 days at $799K? That’s a drop in price of 36 percent, brothers and sisters. The record number of days on the market so far? How’s 482 days sound? Sharpest drop in asking price? Forty percent. Like gravity, economics is inevitable. What goes up must come down."

Read more

Flippers in Trouble Blog Makes Forbes

From Forbes:

In markets like Sacramento, Calif., price depreciation and a high investor share has many flippers hanging out to dry. Watching asking prices drop on flipper properties--those bought and sold within two years, according to real estate agents--has become a sport in the Sacramento real estate blogosphere. By filtering official Multiple Listing Service (MLS) data, the blog Flippers In Trouble tracks every area flipper--those who bought a home in the last two years--and reports who is trying to sell his property for less than he paid. There are currently 1,348 such sellers, a sevenfold increase from last year, the MLS confirmed. A sluggish market indeed.

Congratulations Max! You've hit the big time.

More Housing Blogs

Some recent additions to SL's blogroll:

L.A. Land - Peter Viles on the rapidly changing landscape of the Los Angeles real estate market and beyond.

Texas Housing Bubble - Analyzing the Texas housing bubble and its effect on the economy.

Northern Virginia Housing Bubble Fallout - Let's examine the particles as they fall and hold a lively discussion of the Greater Northern Virginia Real Estate market. You'll also find same-house sales comparisons here.

Baltimore Housing Bubble - A Blog on the Baltimore Housing Bubble.

New York City Housing Bubble - 'The BIG Picture' - A North Williamsburg Brooklyn Bubble ? Fuggetaboutit!

Maine Bubble Blog - A look at the Maine housing market, economy and quality of life issues that impact real estate.

Portland Housing Blog

Pest Control

From the Sacramento Bee:

Thousands of unsold and empty houses in the Sacramento region are fast becoming breeding grounds for mosquitoes. As the region's housing slump creates more vacant houses and a growing excess of homes in transition between buyers and sellers, Culex mosquitoes that can spread the West Nile virus to birds, other animals and humans are thriving in uncared-for swimming pools, garden ponds and yards flooded by broken sprinklers, said David Brown, manager of the Sacramento-Yolo Mosquito and Vector Control District.
...
Sacramento Association of Realtors spokesman Greg Vlasek said there are 9,672 houses for sale in the mosquito district's Sacramento and Yolo counties coverage area alone. Nearly 1,400 have swimming pools.

The district is calling in a new cavalry in its war on mosquitoes: real estate agents. "As you show homes for sale or visit unoccupied properties, please assist us by reporting unmaintained swimming pools, ponds, fountains etc. to the district," states a letter being e-mailed to 6,500 agents today by the district and the Sacramento Association of Realtors.

Brown said the plea -- a first for the district -- follows growing numbers of complaints from Sacramento and Yolo county residents about algae-filled swimming pools, small kiddie pools, spas and ponds in their neighborhoods.
...
The glut of houses that are empty or for sale is aggravating what's already expected to be an earlier West Nile virus season than last year.
...
As real estate agents add mosquito patrol to their duties, there are more than 14,000 homes for sale in El Dorado, Placer, Sacramento and Yolo counties...The rising number of foreclosures is also emptying out more houses in the capital region...Add to that a large but unknown number of empty houses owned by investors.

From 60 Minutes (also video):

For realtors, the six percent commission is sacrosanct. It's remained in place, even as the price of homes has quadrupled over the past 25 years. But as correspondent Lesley Stahl reports, things are beginning to change. What happened to travel agents, stock brokers and book sellers – the encroachment of the Internet – is beginning to affect real estate agents. And the sacred six percent is under assault from online discounters.
...
Glenn Kelman may look like a bike messenger, but he’s an Internet entrepreneur, the president and CEO of Redfin. "Real estate, by far, is the most screwed up industry in America," he says. "And we feel like things that Amazon or eBay or Yahoo have done of other industries, we can do for the real estate industry."

From freeerisa.net:

The portal to this information is a network of blogs created by individuals who are not trained economists but are passionate about housing. These bloggers have growing conviction that a historic bubble in U.S. housing has just begun to deflate. With the help of thousands of readers who add content daily, they report real estate transactions and trends straight from their local markets – from the bottom up. A myriad of observations and contributions, continuously filtered through the Bubble Blogosphere, form a mosaic that may become a model for a new school of populist economic research.
...
The Bubble Blogosphere is attracting a growing audience of people who share values that are mainstream, not extreme. Bloggers and their fans believe the housing bubble was created by excessive speculation, easy credit, greedy mortgage companies, and many gullible or careless buyers. In their view, people should not buy houses they can’t afford, debts eventually must be repaid, governments should not bail out borrowers, and flippers get what they deserve.

The Central Coast Housing Bubble Blog & Average Buyer Blog

The latest additions to SL's blogroll:

• The Central Coast Housing Bubble Blog -Examining housing price inflation and it's effect on the economy from Santa Maria to Paso Robles.
  

• Average Buyer - A blog dedicated to my obsession with buying in the Sacramento housing market
  

Blogroll Update

Recently added to SL's blogroll:

Amador Real Estate - The contrarian view to Amador County, Amador County Real Estate, and the overwhelming evidence of a housing bubble ready to burst.

Westside Bubble - Tracking the real estate bubble on the Westside of Los Angeles, especially in Santa Monica ... available housing inventory, highlights/lowlights, and the larger economy.

California Housing Forecast - Covering the housing bubble in Los Angeles, Orange County, Riverside, San Bernardino, San Diego, Ventura County

Madison Wisconsin Housing Bubble Blog - A historical record of the real estate bubble in and around the Madison, Wisconsin area - and its effect on owners, sellers, potential buyers, and the entire real estate industry.

BLOG.FranklyRealty.com - Buyer beware! Realtors revealed. Like that FOX magician that reveals magic trick secrets, but for Real Estate, from a Realtor.

Spotlight on Flippers in Trouble

The Sacramento Bee's Bob Shallit takes a look at the Sacramento Area Flippers in Trouble blog:

Web site needles our realty bubble

If you doubt there's a frosty trend in the local real estate market, look no further than a five-month-old local Web site. At Sacramento Area Flippers in Trouble (flippersintrouble. blogspot.com), more than 470 Sacramento area homes are listed for sale at prices below -- sometimes way below -- what their owners originally paid.
...
One example: A Folsom home purchased a year ago for $518,500 that's now on the market for $360,000. Another: A Sacramento home purchased for $371,500 in fall 2005 now offered for sale at $249,000
...
Similar sites have popped up in other cities. The local site was launched last July "to counter the positive spin (from Realtors and others) about how great real estate is in tems of appreciation," says its founder, a state worker who identifies himself only as "Max." He claims "Flippers in Trouble" has had 71,000 hits in its first five months in operation.

Why won't he reveal his last name? "A lot of people (in the industry) aren't very happy about what I'm doing," he says.

Several local real estate experts say the site's information is an accurate reflection of how far the market has declined in certain areas. "It's a very real situation," says Mike Toste, a Coldwell Banker real estate agent in Antelope. "I'm seeing sellers take those kinds of losses."

Congrats on the coverage Max!

Housing Bubble Bloggers Make the Wall Street Journal

From the Wall Street Journal:

For years, Americans who refused to buy real estate at what they considered excessive prices were ribbed for failing to profit from one of the greatest booms in history. "Are You Missing the Real Estate Boom?" needled the title of a 2005 book by David Lereah, chief economist of the National Association of Realtors.
...
Now, with the housing market in a slump, renters who sat out the boom are finally getting some satisfaction.

Continue reading here.

Hat Tip: New Jersey RE Report

Some Weekend Reading

AnalysisGuy, over at the Daily Local Home Price Analysis blog (also at thebubblebuster.com), recently released a report on the Sacramento housing market. Check it out here [pdf] or here.

The Sacramento Real Estate Statistics blog has a great series of articles detailing how home builders are undercutting the resale market:

• Priced to Sit: How Flippers Get Into Trouble
• Priced to Sit Part II: DR Horton
• Priced to Sit Part III: Beazer Homes
• Priced to Sit Part IV: Lennar Corporation

OCRenter now tracks foreclosures over at the Bubble Markets Inventory Tracking blog. There are some incredible numbers for the Sacramento real estate market, especially the percentage of foreclosures to pre-foreclosures. As usual, the Sacramento housing market tops the list at 30.4%, easily beating out fellow bubble markets Phoenix (14.0%) and San Diego (24.9%).

PBS.org looks at the housing bubble blogs: Newspaper, Bubble Blogs Feed the Real Estate Obsession.

One more...Rich Toscano looks at what triggered the early 90's housing bust. Was it job losses, interest rates, or the housing boom itself?

• Return to the 90s
• Return to Return to the 90s
• The Cause of All Busts
• Last Time to the 90s
  

Oh, and by the way, I hope the new layout here at Sacramento Land(ing) is easier to read (white background/wider reading area). SL is now fully converted to Blogger's new beta version, which has some handy new features. Most useful, in my opinion, is the "labels" feature, which allows me to describe each post with keywords. You can see a complete list of Sacramento Land(ing) topics by scrolling down to the bottom of the link list on the right. Click on a topic, and the left side will populate with posts on that topic. Generally, topics include posts written in the last 2-3 months. I may add older posts as I have time. This system is not perfect, but hopefully it will make finding older posts easier. As always, you can search for something more specific by using the search field, which resides at the very top left-hand corner of the blog.

Modesto/Merced Housing Blog

ModMec "Going Quickly"
"Tracking the Modesto and Merced (ModMec) Real Estate Market"

California Housing Bubble Blogs

It's time for another field trip. A lot has changed since our last field trip over six months ago. We'll be sticking to the home state this time around. So climb aboard and brace yourself. You are about to enter the California BubbleZone. Emergency exit here.

Southern California Housing Bubble Blogs

"Newer" sites:

• Irvine Housing Blog - Bubbles, crashes, and even some schadenfreude!
  


• This Old House Flip - Investigating detailed examples of flippers attempting to quickly make a profit buying and selling the "American Dream" of owning a home in the San Diego County area.
  


• OC FlipTrack - Tracking the housing bubble in Orange County with a strong focus on Irvine. Everyone wants to live here, there are many rich people here, real-estate never goes down, renting is for suckers, immigration is driving housing demand, OC jobs pay well, they aren't making any more land, and Gary "fifteen percent is pretty much in the bag for Orange County in 2006" Watts is my idol!

• Manhattan Beach Real Estate Bubble - Tracking the housing correction in the high-end SoCal market.

• Forsaken Craft - A smorgasbord of housing bubble information, with an emphasis on the Inland Empire.

• What Bubble? - Socal Housing Bubble - news, tools, opinion

• Real Estate Comments - Someday I'll buy a home in the South Bay area of Los Angeles. That will be after home prices get sane. Traditionally, homes in this area sell for 6X to 8X of median salaries (hey, its a nice area). In the bubble it reached up to ~10X. That's crazy and will correct.
  

The Veterans:

• Professor Piggington's Econo-Almanac for the Landed Poor - Southern California housing bubble news and analysis

• Southern California Real Estate Bubble Crash - Southern California is experiencing a bubble like never seen before

• South Bay Beaches Housing Bubble - Your humble reporter is standing with jaw wide open watching the astronomical bubbleminiums being built in the South Bay area of Los Angeles, with bubbleminium prices to match. I'll do my best to capture the real estate mania in my neighborhood.

• bubbleinfo.com - The insider's guide to North SD County real estate.

• Bubble Markets Inventory Tracking - Tracks housing inventory for several California markets.
  

Back from the dead: Flip This

Suspended Animation: The Boy in the Big Housing Bubble

Northern California/Central Valley Housing Bubble Blogs

"Newer" sites:

• Sacramento Area Flippers in Trouble - Trouble in River City
  

• Sacramento Real Estate Statistics - In-depth statistics about the Sacramento area real estate market.

• Bakersfield Bubble - Discussions and posting on the Bakersfield Bubble Market
  

The Veterans:

• Marin Real Estate Bubble - A place for residents of Marin County, CA and others to express their views regarding the real estate bubble and in particular the Marin real estate market
  

• Sonoma Housing Bubble - Pulling the cork out of the wine country real estate bubble

• Bay Area Housing Bubble - Tracking the East Bay housing bubble.
  

• Burbed - "Forget stock options...just give me a house!" SF Bay Area home price and mortgage insanity blog
  

Help Wanted: Fresno, Merced, Redding, and Chico

A Field Trip Beyond Our Bubble

Did you recently stumble upon this site looking for Sacramento Centex or top ramen prices? A warm welcome to you! For those just getting started in the wonderful world of housing blogs, I thought I'd take you on a little tour of what is available outside our "little" Sacramento housing bubble. All of the links below are also located on the right side of this blog. Warning! You are about to enter the BubbleZone. If skepticism is not your thing, please go to the rear of the bus and use the emergency exit here or here.

Our first stop is The Housing Bubble blog by Ben Jones. For sheer volume of information, this is the best housing bubble blog on the web. Constantly updated with stories from across the country, this blog has a very active commenting community. Bubble Meter is a good source for news and information on the national real estate situation. The blog also does a great job keeping tabs on the ever-expanding world of housing blogs :-)

Two of my favorite regional blogs are the Marin Real Estate Bubble blog and The Boy in the Big Housing Bubble blog. The Marin blog's author, Marinite, reminds me of an Old Testament prophet crying in the wilderness, warning a willfully ignorant populace. Marinite's post on the last bubble in Southern California was one of the first things I read when I discovered the mysterious world of bubble blogs last year.

And how could you resist a blog with such a clever name! The "Boy" in the Big Housing Bubble is actually a journalist by day, and his writing shows. A great place to visit when you crave something beyond my highly honed cut & paste talents.

Other well-established and frequently updated regional blogs include: Seattle Bubble, Professor Piggington (San Diego), The Jersey Shore Real Estate Bubble, Southern California Real Estate Bubble Crash, The Massachusetts Housing Market, The Housing Bubble in Washington DC, and the Northern New Jersey Real Estate Bubble. The Northern NJ blog recently examined the collapse of the 1980's New York housing bubble.

Since launching this site, new blogs seem to be popping up all the time. Some promising ones include: Sonoma Housing Bubble, BubbleTrack, South Florida Real Estate Bubble, and Northern Virginia Bubble. You can keep tabs on this expanding universe here and here.

If you are curious about exploding inventories in other markets, then the Bubble Markets Inventory Tracking blog is a must see. Watch Phoenix inventory go from 10,000 to 37,000+ 38,000+ in just 9 months! Another important data tracking site is Housing Tracker, which keeps tabs on median asking prices and inventory numbers from across the country.

If you are looking for something a little less serious, Overvalued has some great photos of boarded-up million-dollar homes. Burbed has wonderful photos of Bay Area "steals." Flip This follows the follies of the flipper class. The blogger is especially fixated with a West Sacramento flipper who appeared in the Sacramento Bee.

Think the housing bubble is confined to the United States? The Vancouver Housing Market Blog keeps us informed about the housing bubble in Canada. Finally, no tour would be complete without a nod to The Economist's July 2005 article, In Come the Waves. If you haven't read it yet, you should.

Adopt an Orphan Bubble Market

I started this blog because I wanted information about my local housing market and I wanted it all in one place. New York Times blogger Damon Darlin recently made this comment:

But all a home owner cares about is what is happening in his or her neighborhood. National statistics are not very useful to them.

I would add the phrase "potential home owner" as well. There is definitely a need for more information on the local and perhaps even neighborhood level. Maybe we will start seeing more local housing blogs such as this one. Who knows, maybe the future "Bubblosphere" will include names such as Roseville Wilting, Folsom Leaking, or Elk Grove Burning!

So a question to readers: What housing bubble markets still need a housing blog? Here's a map to help you out.