patrick.net

Saw this article in the Oakland (Bay Area News Group) this morning. Nice to know traditional buyers are competing with cash bids by pot farmers :(

This article was in the SJ Mercury News 2 weeks ago.

The headline is highly misleading, because most people would take the headline to mean that prices are up and the market is "hot".

If you read the article, you will see that this is not at all the case. What the article says is that the fraudsters of the REIC (real estate industrial complex) are out in force and engaging in all kinds of criminal as well as unethical behaviors. Most of it is related to insider trading in foreclosures, suppressed bids and other criminal behaviors.

THAT is what is going on.

The market has not gone crazy, but the marketeers have gone criminal.

As we can see, housing prices and volume slumped in silicon valley in april. This time the headline writer got it right.

Silicon Valley home sales, prices slump in April
http://www.mercurynews.com/top-stories/ci_18073213?nclick_check=1

I think that was exactly the time when I asked a random realtor that I met through a friend how the market was looking.

She gave me a careful once over look but nevertheless could not resist claiming that the fortress market was hot.

In a weird way, this explains the 'high prices' in the bay area better than anything else I have read. This market is stuffed full with dishonest, manipulative, unethical people. I am no moralist but I'll moralize here. Having lived in other places, the level of "do anything to get mine" here is just ... astounding. There are dishonest people everywhere, but certain cultures shame them out and they get their comeuppance. Here it's seems to be the rule, not the exception.

justme says

This time the headline writer got it right.
Silicon Valley home sales, prices slump in April
http://www.mercurynews.com/top-stories/ci_18073213?nclick_check=1

LOL! the merc has plenty of times twisted the facts from dqnews.com. As always getting the raw data and narrative from dqnews.com is far better. DQ is far more detailed with data.

http://www.dqnews.com/Articles/2011/News/California/Bay-Area/RRBay110516.aspx

Bay Area Home Sales Lose Momentum; Median Price Dips Below 2010 Level-Again (May 16, 2011)

pkowen says

I am no moralist but I’ll moralize here. Having lived in other places, the level of “do anything to get mine” here is just … astounding.

Pre-97 and before all the bubbles that was not the case. But this is the outcome of inflated hype that has come with all the bubbles we have seen in the past 10-12 years. From what you see today, must have been the same when all the people came here during the gold rush back in the late 1840s.

Feels like we gone Hollywood with all the hypesters, scammers and pimps you see around here.

I read this too with some amusment.

Can anyone 'on the ground', i.e looking right now, confirm this?