A good friend of mine (who is also a Sloper and a successful real estate developer here in Palo Alto) sent me an cool little quartet of graphs this morning:
This is probably only interesting to you if you actually live in Palo Alto, but I think the insight is this: the degree to which all the "fluff" in real estate investing ("fluff" meaning teaser rates, liar loans, subprime, etc.) affected various local markets was far from homogeneous. A place as unfortunate as Stockton (which epitomizes the famed Gertrude Stein quote about Oakland) really has no business zooming up in value. Thus, once the artificial impetus was gone, the appreciation disappeared as well.
My beloved Palo Alto, on the other hand, actually has some meaningful things that people will pay handsomely for (the great weather, Stanford University, marvelous little downtown, and a good chance to live next door to friendly, doe-eyed bloggers). So the dip has been quite muted, bordering on non-existent.
