South Bay home price slide continues

The cause is cheap money! That is, interest rates too low on borrowed money, equals expensive housing. When the Federal Reserve puts their rate back to 5.75 to 6.00%, a balance will return. Not until then. BTW, when is Congress going to outlaw the "points" concept and replace it with a flat loan fee based on objective loan costs, rather than continue to allow the, "pig-in-a-poke", points system that lenders use to game borrowers? I won't hold my breath. Mortgage brokers like this horse trading feature of housing finance.

south bay! where? have you seen redondo, torrance, hermosa, manhattan prices, who are they kidding, maybe if you go someplace else, palmdale or some other places, but prices in the south bay are still very crazily high

To all the greedy realtors and lenders who perpetuated this market cycle to unrealistic levels with their sub-prime and interest-only scams... HAHA!!! Free market principles are correcting your mistakes. And its only just begun.

lower the price!! Funny --my comment was censored!!

If you go back 10 years, about the right time frame for this sort of disaster to be created, you'll find Congressional Democrats beating up the financial industry for doing "mean" things like measuring the ability of borrowers to repay their loans.
Check it out, this is another example of government tinkering with a market system that has blown up all over us.

I'm loving this. As a renter for many years, I laugh everyday with this decline of house sales. I have to rent because the housing market was out of control and I couldn't afford to buy a home. Home owners in Torrance are so uppity, with their noses in the air, acting like they walk on water. This is what you get for being so greedy. I hope the prices keep falling!!

there dropping everywhere in the south bay - of course there still high...its there location but those same homes have decline since 2005

enough wrote:

south bay! where? have you seen redondo, torrance, hermosa, manhattan prices, who are they kidding, maybe if you go someplace else, palmdale or some other places, but prices in the south bay are still very crazily high

So with these falling prices, has anyone seen their rents drop? Why not?

Its always best to own the place you live in, if you can afford it. The monthly cost won't go up, the interest is tax deductible, and you don't have a landlord.

The reason people can afford these prices is that they are using the profits from the old house to buy the new one. When prices are dropping, its time to buy.

"I'm loving this. As a renter for many years, I laugh everyday with this decline of house sales. I have to rent because the housing market was out of control and I couldn't afford to buy a home. Home owners in Torrance are so uppity, with their noses in the air, acting like they walk on water. This is what you get for being so greedy. I hope the prices keep falling!!"

Sounds to me like they are still getting under your skin... and however you see it, owning one's own home is still better than paying for someone else's. Buy where you can... and quit being so whiny... makes you look bad.

give me a mac and cheese sandwich, and I want it pricey.

why would you buy now if market values are still in decline. rents wont go down if prices are going down ....think about it...if people are being foreclosed on...do you think there leaving the state ( no )...they have to rent - which inturn causes a spike of new renters- which states a increase in demand - with minimal supply. so rents are increasing!!!

who laughs last wrote:

So with these falling prices, has anyone seen their rents drop? Why not?
Its always best to own the place you live in, if you can afford it. The monthly cost won't go up, the interest is tax deductible, and you don't have a landlord.
The reason people can afford these prices is that they are using the profits from the old house to buy the new one. When prices are dropping, its time to buy.

All who bought a home in the last 5 years, what were you thinking? Why did you fool yourself into paying more then double the price for the homes we bought for what seems like pennies now. I was lucky to have two homes before the boom. Believe you me, I wanted to sell when it was high or "refinance" with those lending sharks but I kept it simple and lived accordingly.

Homes in Torrance, Carson and the other south bay cities, OVER PRICED! Nothing has changed in our town, same old people with the same old jobs. The value of the dollar did not double, but our ignorance and greed did!

I blame stupid borrowers more than dishonest mortgage borkers. Before I bought my first house in 1987, I read books about mortgages so I could read and understand a mortgage contract. I then read and understood the contract and made an informed decision. Why didn't these idiots who are causing this mortgage crisis? Rather than listening to the lender and buying the most expensive house I could barely afford, I bought a house I could easily afford at 1.6 times my income at the time. The taxpayers shouldn't bail out anyone involved in this mess, nor should the lenders. The proper way to buy a house is to educate yourself about the process, read all documents, and do the math ahead to time to figure out what you can afford. Failing this, get a second job, pay the higher payments, and live up to the agreement you make when you signed on the dotted line. Seriously, do you have any idea how stupid you have to be to take on a negatively amortizing adjustable rate mortgage to buy a house you can barely afford at the introductory rate, and to then be surprised when the payment adjusts to more than you can afford?

Carson City wrote:

I'm loving this. As a renter for many years, I laugh everyday with this decline of house sales. I have to rent because the housing market was out of control and I couldn't afford to buy a home. Home owners in Torrance are so uppity, with their noses in the air, acting like they walk on water. This is what you get for being so greedy. I hope the prices keep falling!!

House prices no doubt will continue to fall and we will see a correction in about 15 years! I must say however that rents will in fact increase because home mortgages will be difficult to obtain due to the current mortgage crisis.......... Such being the case most families will be forced to rent since they will not be able to qualify for a home loan.

The higher demand for rental units albeit apartments, condos or houses will in fact create an environment for higher rents!!!

I would not be laughing if I were you!

Did USC Steve really go to USC? I here its nice their.

Renters should be cautious, if they raise the rents too high, the tenants who didn't foolishly purchase a house and still have a good credit rating will then see they might as well put the money toward a mortgage payment on a foreclosed home. Then all the renters will lose their smart reliable tenants and then have to deal with a bunch of knuckleheads who are already in debt and proved their inability to budget their money appropriately, which then turns into no monthly lease payment by their tenants. And every owner/renter knows how hard it is to get a tenant evicted once you let them in.

Unsold houses eventually disappear, right?

Otherwise, they'd fall into the rental market, depressing rents.

My real estate agent told me that this is how it works.

go to http://www.dqnews.com

and search by city for noted decline

there are tons of things that went wrong. the flippers. banking act of 1999. subprime loans. overinflated egos who believe they "deserve" more in this market. expensive over-pricing of a building structure of wood and cement. the best hope is to get out of this mess by 2009. thats right. there are still many subprime loans out there, that havent "adjusted" yet. when those reset to a higher monthly payment, they will add more foreclosed homes into an already full load dumped on us from this year and last year.

Lending Practices wrote:

If you go back 10 years, about the right time frame for this sort of disaster to be created, you'll find Congressional Democrats beating up the financial industry for doing 'mean' things like measuring the ability of borrowers to repay their loans.
Check it out, this is another example of government tinkering with a market system that has blown up all over us.

If we went back 10 years ago, we'd find Republicans firmly in control of Congress.