Land(ing) in the Sacramento Bee

Today, the Sacramento Bee mentioned this blog for the first time.

[A] prominent real estate blog, Sacramento Land(ing), which has chronicled the housing bust for three years, has announced it is scaling back "due to time constraints."

Some loyal Land(ing) readers are seeing the pullback – and departure of other housing bubble bloggers – as a sign that most of the collapse has happened now and the bottom is approaching. Land(ing)'s author – whose identity is not known – was defiantly a bear when most in the real estate industry were bulls. He recently counseled his audience, "The story is not over yet. The 'landing' is still in progress."

LOL! I guess I should scale back more often ;)

Changes

As I mentioned in a previous thread, the time has come to scale back the scope of this blog. For over three years, this blog has provided frequent news updates of the Sacramento housing market. Unfortunately, this service can no longer be maintained due to time constraints.

Of course, having poured so much time into this project, it's hard to give it up entirely. I have no plans to shut down the site, and I hope you continue to find the sidebar links useful. I do plan to post from time to time (although my new free time might tempt me otherwise). The story is not over yet. The "landing" is still in progress.

As a consolation prize for those who want to continue following news about the Sacramento housing market (and nearby markets), I've added the Google News RSS gadget above. Please continue to post links to articles you find interesting in the Water Cooler.

I hope you have found this blog to be a useful resource over the past few years.

3 Years of Sacramento Land(ing)

Thank you readers, commenters, and fellow bloggers for three very interesting years!

With the confession booth in demand and the mainstream media sounding more like bloggers, perhaps it's time to wind things down around here. (Hey, everyone is doing it.)

Sacramento Foreclosures "Skyrocket" to "Stratospheric Levels"

From DQNews:

The number of mortgage default notices filed against California homeowners jumped last quarter to its highest level in more than fifteen years, a real estate information service reported. Lending institutions sent homeowners 81,550 default notices during the October-to-December period. That was up by 12.4 percent from 72,571 the previous quarter, and up 114.6 percent from 37,994 for fourth-quarter 2006, according to DataQuick Information Systems. Last quarter's number of defaults was the highest in DataQuick's statistics, which go back to 1992...Last quarter's default numbers were a record in 42 of the state's 58 counties.
...
Trustees Deeds recorded, or the actual loss of a home to foreclosure, totaled 31,676 during the fourth quarter. That's the highest since DataQuick began tracking Trustees Deeds in 1988. Last quarter's total rose 30.8 percent from 24,209 in the previous quarter, and jumped 421.2 percent from 6,078 in fourth quarter 2006. In the last real estate cycle, Trustees Deeds peaked at 15,418 in third-quarter 1996.
...
Of the homeowners in default, an estimated 41 percent emerge from the foreclosure process by bringing their payments current, refinancing, or selling the home and paying off what they owe. A year ago it was about 71 percent.

Sacramento County Notices of Default: 5,807, 120.4% YoY

Calculated Risk has some nice historical charts of California foreclosures.

From the Sacramento Bee:

Foreclosures and defaults soared to stratospheric levels in Sacramento and the rest of the state last year...Notices of default in the eight-county Sacramento region, stretching from Amador to Nevada counties, were up 106 percent in the quarter. For all of 2007, foreclosures in greater Sacramento were up an astonishing 496 percent, to 10,049, DataQuick said.

From the KSN.com:

The nationwide foreclosure crisis has forced millions of people to move out of their homes. But the forgotten victims are the dogs and cats left behind. In California alone, thousands of these animas have become pets in peril.

Sydney is a two-year-old Golden Retriever and an animal victim of California’s mortgage meltdown. She currently lives at the Sacramento SPCA along with dozens of other displaced pets. "The reason Sydney is here is she was given up last year from people who were moving. And she's a wonderful dog and we've adopted her," said SPCA Director Rick Johnson.

Sydney is one of the lucky ones, because at this shelter, the number of abandoned pets has doubled in the last four months. SPCA Animal Services Worker Sarah Varanin said, "We had about 33 dogs come in on Saturday alone. So it's just increasing every day."

KCRA (video): Mayor Heather Fargo's take on the Sacramento real estate market and budget mess.

This headline caught my attention:


What they really meant was 14 years:

Only 30 percent of Placer County employers are planning to add employees in the first six months of the year, according to a recent survey by Roseville accounting firm Gallina LLP....[E]mployers were predicting the slowest growth in the 14-year history of the survey. About half as many employers plan to add jobs in the first half of 2008 as did in the first half of 2007...73 percent of those surveyed said the weak housing market was hurting business, compared to 56 percent one year ago.

Then again maybe it was a Freudian slip. From OpEdNews.com:

From an historical prospective, the real estate market has always been a gauge of the greater U.S. economy from nine months to 18 months earlier than the overall economy.
...
The entire U.S. economy is at the brink of not only a recession, but much worse teetering on the brink of a depression...There have been six depressions since 1837 in the U.S...The cause of every major depression has been land speculation. Economist Henry George discovered this fact 120 years ago. However, never before in U.S. economic history has there been as much land speculation than in the past decade. Land from Florida up the eastern seaboard in New York across the nation to California has been purchased by speculators at the highest rate in the nation’s history, much of it with little money down to protect investors interests.

From Roseville & Rocklin Today:

Last week I got sort of embroiled in a debate with some of the regulars at Sacramento Land(ing). I do enjoy reading the blog but have to remember that the diehard fans there believe very strongly that all Realtors are evil and self serving. It always makes me chuckle when you click on one of their names, like “happy renter” or a host of other equally cute monikers and are directed to their blank profiles. Why is it so hard to believe that most Realtors care about their clients and place their needs above making a commission? We understand being a Realtor is relationship business and doing what is right for the client is right for our business.

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

It's Gwynster Week on Sacramento Land(ing)

The ever popular Gwyn has graciously agreed to guest blog here while I'm on vacation. I'll be back in about a week. Don't burn down the house while I'm gone ;-)

Sacramento Bee: Record Inventory

From the Sacramento Bee:

The number of for-sale signs at existing homes reached a record 15,566 in El Dorado, Placer, Sacramento and Yolo counties, according to Sacramento-based TrendGraphix. Factor in 4,899 new and yet-to-be-sold homes reported by area builders in June and it pushes the total number of area houses for sale past 20,000.

Previous high: 15,474 (July 2006)
1990s high: 13,507 (April 1992)

Here's what readers think is in store for next year:

Consulting the Google Gods: Why?

What are people thinking about when they find this blog? Here are some examples:

why merced county goes foreclosure?
why loan defaults foreclosures increasing sacramento
why sacramento foreclosures
elk grove why are people selling their homes
why people move to sacramento
why is the housing market so bad
why are there so many homes for sale in the suburbs of sacramento california
why in sacrament in 1990 the real market when down
why the screwed up housing situation in sacramento
why the housing market boom has lessened
why is the housing market decline in merced ca
why tracy city's house price is decreasing?
why did central pacific mortgage company close
why elliot homes selling for less folsom
2007 why we aren't getting true housing data
jts homes in meadow why are there so many foreclosure
why declining enrollment in california public schools
why so many forclosures in tracy california
why sacramento still continue to build new homes

SL's Water Cooler - June 2007

Post off-topic links, observations, and stories here. Please read the comment policy before posting.

Co-Blogger Poll Results

Imagine Sacramento Land(ing) as a group blog. Who would be your top pick as a co-blogger?

Scoring more than 1%:

• Gwynster: 51%
• Sippn: 19%
• Perfect Storm: 10%
• Patient Renter: 6%
• Diggn Deeper: 5%
• Sitt'n Out This One: 3%
• Other: 2%

A Question for SL Readers

Imagine SL as a group blog. Who would be your top pick as a co-blogger?
	Anon1137
	Cmyst
	Diggn Deeper
	Drwende
	Fishtaco
	Gwynster
	Garth Farkley
	HighSierraGuy
	Lexi
	NorCalJeff
	Paranoid Renter
	Patient Renter
	Perfect Storm
	RalphK
	Rocklin Renter
	RMB
	SFJack
	Sippn
	Sittin' Out This One
	Other (specify via comments)
Free polls from Pollhost.com

Comment Policy

Comments are welcome. However, please keep your comments civil and avoid personal insults, profanity or other inappropriate language. Comments may be deleted for any reason.

Posting Comments

I've turned off the anonymous comments for now. If you'd like to post a comment, you'll need a Google account.

Congratulations to the Vancouver Housing Market Blog!

And the best regional real estate blog award goes to...the Vancouver Housing Market blog. Congratulations! Richly deserved.

Oh, and this upstart, amateur blog about a little "cow town" was the runner-up. Thank you readers!

Sacramento Land(ing) Turns 1

2007 Real Estate Blogging Awards

Category: Best Regional Blog
Recognizes the best real estate blog focused on a local or regional real estate market.

Nominees:

• Burbed / Bay Area region, CA (http://www.burbed.com)
• Northern Virginia Real Estate Guide / Northern Virginia region, VA (http://askmerv.choice3realty.com)
• Sacramento Land(ing) / Sacramento, CA (http://sacramentolanding.blogspot.com)
• Sonoma Housing Bubble / Sonoma region, CA (http://sonomahousingbubble.blogspot.com)
• Vancouver Housing Market Blog / Vancouver, Canada (http://van-housing.blogspot.com)

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.

100,000

According to statcounter, Sacramento Land(ing) received its 100,000 hit sometime early this morning.

A big thanks to all the readers and contributors to this blog!