7 KEY POINTS ON WHY IT IS STILL OKAY TO BUY IN THE BAY AREA

1. 35% of the homes in the U.S. do NOT have a mortgage.
2. 94.88% of all loans ARE performing.
3. The foreclosure problem in this country is really a story of seven states.
4. The BIGGEST foreclosure problems are in Michigan, Ohio, and Indiana. These are manufacturing states that had horrible job losses. Since 2001, Michigan has lost 300,000 jobs. These states would have had problems no matter what the market condition happens to be.
5. The other four states, California, Florida, Nevada, and Arizona----experienced significant overbuilding. Twenty-five per of the foreclosures in these states are on properties that are held by investors who were speculating.
6. ONLY 25% of all mortgages are subprime, and of these 75% are performing.
7. In the other 43 states, foreclosures have fallen in 2007 from 2006.
(In California which is the predictor of what is to come in Florida, the following is being said……)

According to Leslie Young, chief economist for the California Assoc. of Realtors, (which mirrors what we are seeing here) that the areas being hardest hit in California are the outlying areas where there has been overbuilding. The resale market in California’s major markets continues to be strong. In fact, the closer you are to a metropolitan area, the better the sales are. In the million-dollar plus price range, there has been essentially no change from 2006 to 2007.