From Bloomberg:The median price for a single-family home in the U.S. dropped 7.7 percent in the first quarter, the biggest decline in at least 29 years, as values tumbled in two-thirds of U.S. cities, the National Association of Realtors said...The biggest declines were in Sacramento, the capital of California, which had a 29 percent drop, followed by the metropolitan area around Riverside and San Bernardino, with a decline of 28 percent.From the NAR's October 2005 Sacramento "Anti-Bubble Report" (shockingly, the report is no longer available on nar.org!):With home prices rising strongly in most parts of the country, there has been widespread media coverage on the possibility of a housing market bust. A thorough analysis of the Sacramento-Arden-Arcade-Roseville metro market, as detailed below, reveals that there is little danger of this. In fact, the local housing market is in excellent shape with a potential for significant housing equity gains, particularly for homebuyers who plan to remain in their house for the long run...Housing equity will most likely continue to accumulate to local homeowners.
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From CBS 13: If you're looking to buy a home in the down market you may think you're getting a deal on a foreclosure. But beware, the bank may be one step ahead of you. Banks could be in a bidding war to sell you short...Banks find the fair market value on a foreclosed home then list the home for less -- sometimes tens of thousand of dollars less. What looks like a good deal to a potential buyer can spark a bidding war which drives the price back up for the banks and buyers.
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From the New York Times:At the end of 2007, areas with the highest vacancy rates in housing intended for owner occupancy fell into two categories: Rust Belt areas like Detroit, Cleveland and Akron, Ohio, and former boom areas like Orlando and Tampa in Florida, and Las Vegas. Although home prices have fallen sharply in parts of California, only the Sacramento area shows high vacancy levels.

High vacancy rates put renewed pressure on prices, of course, and also serve as a warning that the home building industry may have a long wait before it can regain volume.From the Modesto Bee:"The new home sales rate is nothing short of dismal," lamented Dean Wehrle, vice president of Sullivan Group Real Estate Advisors. He said Stanislaus, Merced and San Joaquin county subdivisions are averaging one sale per month...Sales have been so slow throughout the three-county region that Hanley Wood said the inventory of approved lots is enough to last until 2012.
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From Forbes (hat tip Patient Renter):It's no secret that homeowners with subprime mortgages have taken a beating. Next up: those who have combined their mortgages with home equity loans, second loans or both. These combinations spell especially bad news for homeowners in Sacramento, Calif., San Diego, Washington, D.C., and Colorado Springs, Colo., markets with some of the nation's highest concentrations of homeowner debt. In these spots, prices are dropping, making it very difficult for homeowners to refinance as lenders are reluctant to take on risk.
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1. Sacramento, Calif.
Percent change [in median price] from 2007: -18.5%
Total outstanding mortgages: 480,881
Second mortgage or home equity loan: 129,736 (27%)
Both second mortgage and home equity loan: 7,288 (1.5%)Compare to other cities here.

From the Sacramento Bee: California's severe housing downturn claimed another fixture of the Sacramento-area homebuilding industry Wednesday when John D. Reynen, co-founder of Reynen & Bardis Communities, filed for personal bankruptcy protection...It's the second major bankruptcy-protection filing involving a privately owned land developer and builder in the capital region.
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The company, formed more than 30 years ago, has largely shut down homebuilding and recently laid off about half of its 180 employees.Press release available via Home Front.

From the Sacramento Bee:
During the first three months of the year, banks repossessed a record-shattering 5,278 homes in the Sacramento region, La Jolla-based DataQuick Information Systems said Tuesday. Put another way: The area's first-quarter foreclosures already are half of last year's entire total.
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From the Sacramento Bee: Banks repossessed nearly 5,300 homes in the capital region during the first three months of 2008, setting a record and pushing the region's foreclosure tally to more than 15,300 since the beginning of 2007....The number of home loan defaults also neared 10,000 during the quarter in Amador, Nevada, El Dorado, Placer, Sacramento, Sutter, Yolo and Yuba counties, according to La Jolla-based DataQuick Information Systems.

Those defaults...hint at thousand more foreclosures in months to come. Altogether, the region has now seen about 34,000 home loan defaults since January 2007, according to DataQuick. From DQNews: Last quarter's default numbers were a record in almost all of the state's 58 counties.
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Foreclosure resales have emerged as a significant market factor, accounting for 33.1 percent of all California resale activity last quarter. A year ago it was 3.2 percent. Foreclosure resales vary significantly by area, from 5.1 percent in San Francisco County to 66.7 percent in San Joaquin County.
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East
1. NY Mets
2. Philadelphia Phillies
3. Atlanta Braves
4. Florida Marlins
5. Washington Nationals

The Mets were the best team in the National League for 5 ½ months last season before the collapse. This off-season they brought in the best pitcher of this generation without losing any contributing pieces from last season’s team. If Pedro Martinez is healthy you can expect to see the Mets' rotation be a strength whereas it was a major weakness heading into last season. Their lineup is headed by three potential MVP candidates in David Wright, Jose Reyes, and Carlos Beltran and should score enough runs to finish in the Top 10 in baseball again. Ultimately I think they’re the class of the NL and a solid tier above the contending Phillies and Braves. I think the Mets win the division handily on their way to a low 90’s win season and home-field advantage throughout the NL Playoffs.

Even with the MLB season starting I simply can't bring myself to stray away from March Madness right now. The Sweet 16 starts tonight so be sure to watch. Now Stefan already gave you his Sweet 16 picks here.

I'm going to give you my predictions as well as some things that I've seen around the blogosphere before. I'm going to predict games with a coinflip (top seed is heads) and then by fantasy mascot battle. Then when the sweet 16 round is over we can look and see how our predictions stacked up against that of honest Abe and the mascots' blood. Let's get it on!

EAST
UNC vs. WSU
Stefan's Pick: UNC
Joe's Pick: WSU *Need it to happen to win my bracket challenge!
Penny: WSU
Mascots: WSU - While a ram is hard nosed and tough I see the Cougar's ferocity and agility paying off in this battle. It goes down to the wire but the Cougar prevails.

Tennesse vs. Louisville
Stefan's Pick: Louisville
Joe's Pick: Tennesse
Penny: Louisville
Mascots: Tennesse - All a cardinal can do is fly away from and peck at the Volunteer. But when the volunteer fires, down goes the cardinals.

From the Wall Street Journal: Cities and counties with some of the worst fallout from the nation's housing slump also are seeing a sharp upswing in vacant homes, a trend economists say might set up further declines in home prices. The national homeowner vacancy rate, which gauges the number of vacant homes on the market, rose to 2.8% in the fourth quarter, according to Census Bureau data.
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Vacancies...jumped in some once-booming Western cities. Between 2005 and 2007, homeowner vacancies more than tripled to 3.8% from 1.2% in the Riverside-San Bernardino area, part of California's Inland Empire, east of Los Angeles. In the Sacramento area, vacancies jumped to 4.2% from 1.2%.Interactive Map - We beat Detroit!

From the Modesto Bee: Monica Granados regularly encounters people who aren't even trying to fight foreclosure in San Joaquin County. Granados is a process server who delivers eviction notices to houses repossessed by lenders.
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From the Stockton Record: Home-sales auctions have popped in the Central Valley since last summer, but the latest twist is an online auction for new homes with a bidding process similar to that used by eBay.
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Some residents there aren't happy about the impending auction. Richard Provencio lives at the north end of Crescent Park Circle, a lane that has 14 of the 18 houses to be auctioned off - the remaining four are model homes a block south. "I feel very robbed," he said. "These are the same houses I paid $620,000 for, and now they could be selling for $300,000 to $400,000."...Recently, he counted 15 houses for sale down the long street from his house, and many sit empty because of foreclosure. "Our ghost town," he said. "It's just sad, man."

Many of the homes in the development were bought initially by investors and then filled with renters, he said...The auction likely will draw only more investors, who then will put renters into the houses, he said.
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From the Sacramento Bee: [T]here's no doubt the steep drop in home values – median prices in Sacramento County are almost 28 percent below last year's figures – and relatively low interest rates have sparked interest. [DataQuick's Andrew] LePage said investor buys accounted for 18.6 percent of February closings in Sacramento County. That's up significantly from 12.7 percent in November and December. [The high for investor buys was May 2004 when they accounted for 25 percent of sales.]
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Overall, sales remained weak, though real estate broker Tom Zipp of Citrus Heights said Thursday that rising investor activity "traditionally signals the bottom part of the market."DQ stats by county (All Homes & Existing SFH/Condos/New Homes)
DQ stats by zip code

I'm going to leave the college basketball pleasure to Stefan, however in keeping with the bracketology this week I'm going to give you my bracket for the NCAA D1 WCHA Conf. Tourney. I will be in attendance to all games help up in Grand Forks this weekend with UND taking on Mich Tech So I'm a little excited to say the least.

Change in median asking price (year-over-year): -27.9%

Change in median asking price (since August 2005): -35.2%
Source: Housing Tracker

AgentBubble has posted some numbers for February over at the Sacramento Real Estate Statistics blog. Year-over-year change:

From the Sacramento Bee:Take $2 billion away from Sacramento's homeowners – money they could be spending on cars or plasma TVs or kitchen cabinets – and you begin to understand what the housing slump is doing to the region's economy. The impact of the real estate downturn goes far beyond the thousands of construction and mortgage- industry layoffs, or the epidemic of foreclosures. The 25 percent drop in housing prices since 2005 means fewer homeowners are able to borrow against their equity.
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In the four-county Sacramento area, equity "extractions" – through refinancing, home-equity loans or outright home sales – fell by 34 percent last year, according to market research firm DataQuick Information Systems. That erased $2.11 billion's worth of wealth from the region....The $2.11 billion reduction in equity extractions represents a little more than 2 percent of the region's overall economy. Coupled with the other effects of the housing slump, including layoffs and foreclosures, it's no wonder many analysts are predicting a recession.Chart: The diminishing 'wealth effect'

From the Sacramento Bee: Every business day in the region an average of 85 people lost their homes to lenders, near double the number of foreclosures from June, according to Fair Oaks-based Foreclosures.com, a Web site for real estate investors.
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"I don't think we are seeing the worst of these numbers," said Robert Kleinhenz, deputy chief economist for the California Association of Realtors. Kleinhenz and others said they expect high foreclosure numbers to continue for at least another six months.DataQuick Stats by County
DataQuick Stats by Zip

From the Sacramento Bee: As foreclosures continue to grow in the capital-area real estate market, Sacramento and Elk Grove are copying a trend launched last year in Stockton: bus tours of bank-owned homes. As the buying season begins, three tours are planned for Feb. 23. There's one for investors in Sacramento and two for first-time buyers and investors in Elk Grove.
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From the Granite Bay PT: Michael Lyon, chief executive officer for Lyon Real Estate...told the audience the market has changed drastically. In 2001 about 800 homes were sold throughout Placer County in about a month. "Today there are about 2,460 homes for sale in Placer County and only about 219 are sold each month," he said.

From CBS News (video) (hat tip Tyrone):It sounds complicated, but it's really fairly simple. Banks lent hundreds of billions of dollars to homebuyers who can't pay them back. Wall Street took the risky debt, dressed it up as fancy securities, and sold it around the world as safe investments. It sounds like a shell game or Ponzi scheme; in some ways, it was a house of cards rife with corruption, greed, and negligence.

From the Sacramento Bee:In 24 years as president and chief executive officer of Sacramento's Safe Credit Union, Henry Wirz said he's never seen such "widespread credit problems in the Sacramento region."
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Q: You've been here since 1984 and seen all the cycles, up and down, good and bad. And this is the worst credit problem you've ever seen in Sacramento?

A: The reason I say that is this is touching not just the people who have traditionally always been a problem, which is people who have lower credit scores. In every crisis, when we first have a downturn, it's the people at the bottom of the economic pyramid who seem to experience the worst outcomes. I think what surprised us was in this downturn we're seeing people who had, at the outset, relatively good credit having negative outcomes.
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From the Sacramento Bee:
Statistics released Thursday showed that median sales prices declined 20 percent during the year in Sacramento County for new and existing homes combined. Property researcher DataQuick Information Systems Inc. declared it the steepest fall for a large urban county in California.
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"What you're starting to see right now with the foreclosure inventory swelling is the banks are getting aggressive," said Lincoln-based real estate agent Mike Toste. "They're the ones wheeling. If all their competition is bank-owned and they drop prices 30 to 40 percent, then they've got to do the same thing. If they can't sell within 60 to 90 days, they're getting extremely hungry. I think 2008 is going to be a year to remember."
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They said it wouldn't happen, but it just did.

The decline in Sacramento home prices has surpassed the total decline of the 1990s housing bust. According to the Sacramento Association of Realtors, the December median home price fell to $280,000, a drop of 28.7% from its August 2005 peak of $392,750. That compares to a 24.1% drop between July 1990 and December 1996.

From the Chicago Daily Herald: Kimball Hill Inc. today warned it might become the latest Chicago-area victim of the national housing crisis. The Rolling Meadows-based homebuilder said in a filing today it has "substantial doubts about whether we will be able to continue as a going concern."

From the Central Valley Business Times: Central Valley cities are among the most likely places in the nation to see home prices decline in the next two years, according to a report Tuesday from the PMI Group Inc. (NYSE: PMI), a Walnut Creek-based writer of mortgage insurance. The most likely place in the country is Naples, Fla., in PMI’s opinion, but Stockton and Merced are tied as the fifth most likely locations for price declines.

From the Stockton Record:

Can't make your auto payment? Light your car on fire, and tell the insurance company you were a victim of theft. That's what a local prosecutor says he's seeing more of these days. But instead of chasing down a phantom arsonist, oftentimes he charges the car owner with insurance fraud.

A symptom of the overall economy - a troubled housing market and high gas prices - auto arsons in San Joaquin County have doubled in the past three years, according to the state Department of Insurance.
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From the Sacramento Bee: Sacramento-area home builders can be excused for cheering the end of 2007. Now their problem is 2008. Statistics released today by the Folsom-based Gregory Group show builders closed 2007 with just 1,320 fourth-quarter sales in El Dorado, Placer, Sacramento, Sutter, Yolo and Yuba counties. It was the lowest quarterly tally since the Gregory Group began counting sales in the fourth quarter of 1999. Sales for the full year were the lowest in a decade.
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Builders in 2007 sold 7,407 homes in the six-county region, the Gregory Group reported. That was 2,181 fewer than in 2006 and the fewest sales since 1997, when Sacramento was coming out of the 1990s housing downturn.
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From the Sacramento Bee:Dean Wehrli, vice president of the Sullivan Group Real Estate Advisors in Elk Grove: Foreclosures soar; buyers wait; credit tightens. The picture for Sacramento's residential market in 2008 doesn't look good...[P]rices are still too high for potential buyers.

From the Sacramento Bee:Up until 2007, the good ship Sacramento appeared to be sailing along smoothly, propelled by a pair of seemingly steady winds – state government spending and real estate appreciation.

From Reuters:

Housing markets from Punta Gorda, Florida, to Stockton, California, will crash and suffer price drops of more than 30 percent before the housing crisis is over, a report from Moody's Economy.com said on Thursday...Punta Gorda, Florida, and Stockton, California, are the hardest hit markets in the U.S., with price declines from peak-to-trough forecast at 35.3 percent and 31.6 percent, respectively.
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These markets have been hard hit due to several reasons, namely the exiting of investors from the areas, a fair amount of subprime mortgage loans causing an increase in foreclosures and overbuilding by home builders, Zandi told Reuters.Moody's past predictions for Stockton home prices: