California freefall: Home prices down 26% in February

While McCain blathers about economic jargon he does not even understand and Hillary Clinton keeps trying to knee cap Barack Obama - who I suspect Bill and Hillary refer to in private as that "uppity nigger" - the country is going to Hell in a hand basket quickly, as shown by what is happening to home prices in California. I truly wish that for the good of the country Hillary would close down her campaign, stop trying to blackmail Nancy Pelosi and the U. S. House of Representative Democrats, and slink off somewhere to spend the $30+ million she and Bill have accumulated in a little over 3 year's time. Here are highlights on the housing free fall in California that has to be leaving many homeowners with mortgage balances well in excess of what their homes are now worth (http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/laland/2008/03/california-free.html):

Signs of distress are piling up in the California housing market, where prices are falling at three times the national rate of decline. Statewide, median sales prices fell by a stunning 26% from year-ago levels in February, with home prices dropping at a rate of nearly $3,000 a week, the California Association of Realtors reports. Further, the CAR says the Fed's interest rate-cutting campaign "will have little near-term direct effect on the housing market."

In the San Fernando Valley, losing a home to foreclosure is now almost as common for families as buying a home. The L.A. Daily News: "During January and February, there were 1,084 foreclosures and 1,335 sales of houses and condos in Valley communities from Glendale to Calabasas, according to the San Fernando Valley Economic Research Center at California State University, Northridge."

On a percentage basis, the California price meltdown is more than three times as severe as the national decline of 8.2% in median prices reported this week by the National Association of Realtors. On an absolute basis, the California meltdown is even more severe: Nationally, prices fell over the past year at a rate of $338 per week; in California, prices fell at a rate of $2,788 per week.