To quote the great Michael Jackson Classic (not "Crazy Mike" of recent years): Jamon, and you don't stop. You just can't get enough. Jamon, and you don't stop. You just can't get enough (of bad housing news). Hee Hee!

I've been following the Bay Area's lead housing doom-and-gloomer patrick.net for quite a few years now and boy am I glad I have been. Patrick compiles news and blog posts about the housing market and emails them to his mailing list every week night. His focus, of course, has always been the housing bubble. In fact, I credit him with keeping me out of harms way by educating me on the mechanics of how housing works and how out of whack everything has gotten. I've been noticing that my daily sifting of the news Patrick presents has lead me to discriminate which stories I click through and read and which I tend not to read. I tend to categorize his collected stories into two major groups: blog posts and news articles. I notice that I seem to favor the news reports especially those by bloomberg, the wall street journal, the new york times, and other reputable outlets. MSN original content and USA today are another slightly different grouping of news that I like but a tiny bit less. I see stories from these news outlets as a sort of metric as to what the general population has on their mind...these are, after all what many consider to be the "People Magazine of News". It's not that I don't consider the blog posts are not accurate or credible or anything of that nature, but it's more a factor of trying to gauge the sentiment of the market overall. I find that the larger news outlets not only report the news, but they influence behavior by their very act of reporting. Weird how that works, right? Anyway, to those doom and gloom bloggers, keep up the good work. I've noticed the err in my ways and will try to balance out my housing news sifting.

Anyway, here's a nice quote from bloomberg:

New York to California

Prices may start to drop in the New York City metropolitan area beginning in the fourth quarter of this year and continue falling 1 percent to 7 percent per quarter through 2008, according to estimates from Zandi.

Prices started to drop in Orange County, California, as early as the third quarter of 2006, said Zandi. The median price in the Boston area fell 2 percent during the past quarter, according to the National Association of Realtors. In the San Francisco Bay Area, Zandi forecasts a decline of 3 percent in the last quarter of this year and subsequent drops of 4 percent to 6 percent for the following three quarters.

Home sales in the San Francisco Bay Area fell in July to their lowest in 12 years, although prices in the city remain steady, and houses are taking twice as long to sell in parts of Mclean, Virginia, outside Washington, D.C., according to DataQuick Information Systems and the Northern Virginia Association of Realtors.

Ouch...so even my early 2009 prediction may be too premature. Better make it November 2009...that sounds about right.

Just Too Funny (even funnier than cat videos):

The St Petersburg Times from Florida. “Jill Jackson, a single mom and apartment renter with an annual take-home pay of about $24,000, managed to go on an incredible real estate buying binge last year.”

“In the span of 10 weeks, she bought 10 properties. She did not put a single penny down, borrowing the price for all 10 by signing for mortgage loans totaling $1.84-million. The investment plan seemed too good to be true. And it was.”

“A year later, Jackson’s portfolio has collapsed like a house of cards, with every one of the 10 properties in foreclosure and Jackson’s credit wrecked. The 31-year-old says she was foolish to fall for the get-rich-quick scheme pitched to her by a church acquaintance.”

“‘I didn’t know what I was doing,’ Jackson acknowledges. ‘I don’t have any background in real estate.’”

“Beginning with three closings on a single day in February 2006, Jackson says she followed the Investors Outlet instructions, buying 10 properties she never had seen. She paid about $700,000 more for the portfolio than the county property appraiser said the properties were worth, a premium of 61 percent.”

“‘This is a snapshot of what’s happening in every village, town, city and county in America,’ said Ralph R. Roberts, a real estate broker. ‘A lot of unassuming young men and women are being induced to be straw buyers.’”

“As before her foray into real estate investment, Jackson lives in a second-floor apartment in St. Petersburgand owns no real estate. She says she has been hurt by the investment fiasco and the accompanying newspaper publicity but has learned from it.” “‘I didn’t wish for it to turn out this way,’ she says. ‘I know a lot more now.’”

Read More: The Housing Bubble Blog - Like An Instant Brick Wall On The Roadrunner Show

Don't Try This At Home

Jackass Vols. 2 & 3

I'm not sure what's wrong with the world these days, but I guess I'm part of the problem...at least partly. I like Jackass. I haven't seen the movie, but I will. And I will own the DVD. I admit it. I'm a fan of Beavis and Butthead, South Park, Jackass, and other random nonsense. I was a WWF (now called WWE) fan and have always wanted to see some of those backyard wrestling DVDs, but haven't had enough nerve to drop twenty bucks for crap. I bet if I did though, it'd be downright entertaining to watch dumbass trailer trash jump off the roof of their double-wides into their dining room err...I mean folding table with their buddy lying on top. Ahhh..America, America, God shed his grace on thee....