Calculated Risk interview

Nice interview with Calculated Risk's Bill McBride on Business Insider (h/t Paul Krugman). CR/Bill was an icon to a lot of us back when (you know you were one if you recoginze his original masthead, above!).

JW: Are you surprised at the institution that Calculated Risk has become? Did you think you’d be going strong 7 years later?
BM: It’ll be 8 years in January. I didn’t even know what a blog was. I’m going to start one and figure out what it is, and I’m going to write about housing, because that’s what I’m most concerned about. …What happens is it just got more and more interesting, the truth is I’m always interested in the economy

I'm still tracking Westside inventory monthly, just haven't gotten around to posting it. I'll do a year-end summary for 2012. The short summary is, significantly lower inventory than previous years.

Krugman: Obama, Romney, Jobs

Paul Krugman posted this chart today that really says it all.

Greg Sargent is rightly outraged by Romney’s claim that Obama is a job destroyer ... Does this look to you like a president who “lost jobs”, or like a president who inherited an economy in free fall? You can accuse Obama of not doing enough to promote recovery — and I have (although the biggest villain here was Romney’s own party). But to claim that Obama caused the job loss is indefensible.

(There's so much to say in this election year, I think you're going to be hearing rather more from me.)

Low-end 90402 and 90405 sales in 2011

Ah, Redfin. I used to manually track and report listings and subsequent sales for Santa Monica 90402 and 90405. Now it's as simple as putting a zipcode into Redfin, selecting sales within the last year, and sorting by price.

So here are the 2011 sale prices to $1.75M in 90402 on the regular streets (omitting busy 7th, 26th, and San Vicente). Conclusion is there's little low-end, and it's continued to hold between $1.6M and $1.7M since the crash.

Address, bed/bath, sale price

210 21st Pl., 2/2, $1,625K
620 17th St., 2/1.75, $1,650K
533 10th St., 3/2, $1,692K
828 Georgina Ave., 3/2, $1,693K
220 12th St., 2/1.5, $1,700K
434 17th St., 3/2, $1,725K
620 15th St., 3/2, $1,730K
445 18th St., 3/2, $1,747K

And here are 2011 sale prices to $900K in 90405 Sunset Park, omitting busy streets (Ocean Park, Pearl, Marine, 11th, 14th, 17th, Cloverfield, 23rd), 40-foot-wide lots, and airport-adjacent.

Here I'm seeing a continuing price decline, with quite a few sales below $800K, in contrast to even two years ago, let alone peak Ashland and Hill sales prices 2005-2008 well over $1M, and Hill Street back to 2004.

1514 Maple St., 2/2, $675K
1337 Grant St., 2/1, $675K
1741 Cedar St., 3/1, $730K
2345 21st St., 4/3, $750K
2025 Ashland Ave., 3/2.5, $770K
2940 16th St., 3/2, $775K
1109 Maple St., 2/1, $798K
1114 Maple St., 3/1.75, $814K
2315 27th St., 2/1, $825K
2417 18th St., 4/2, $849K
1044 Maple St., 3/3, $873K
1808 Ashland Ave., 3/1, $875K
2216 Pier Ave., 4/2.5, $880K
2255 22nd St., 2/1, $900K