Southern California home sales up.

[Nick Gromicko]

August home sales in Southern California rose 8.6% from July, with 19,654 homes and condos selling in the counties of Los Angeles, Riverside, San Diego, Ventura, San Bernardino and Orange counties. That compares to
18,090 sales in July and 18,541 sales from a year ago. August was the first month since mid-2010 to report a year-over-year gain in Southern California home sales. Distressed home sales made up 46% of all sales in the area in August.

[Christopher Currins]

California saw a 55 percent increase in homes receiving a default notice last month, August.


The number of U.S. homes that received an initial default notice -- the first step in the foreclosure process -- jumped 33 percent in August from July, foreclosure listing firm RealtyTrac Inc

[Nick Gromicko]

Bad news for them, good news for us.

[Jeffrey R. Pope]

Either way you look at it, homes are selling in CA, which means more business for home inspectors.

[James H. Bushart]

Originally Posted by gromicko

Bad news for them, good news for us.

I agree.

Downward spiralling home values are bad news for sellers and their commissioned salespeople ... but there has not been, in a generation, a better time to buy a house to live in.

[Nick Gromicko]

And it's only getting better (for inspectors).

The Chinese are about to stop acting stupid. They aren't going to lend us any more (no one wants to be paid back with our crappy wet-ink pieces of paper). And the U.S. government has gone mad with this additional $450 billion jobs destruction Bill announced. The Tea Party isn't strong enough to stop them (unfortunately). If we can't borrow and we continue to spend... we have to print (no other option). Printing = inflation. And the only way to hedge inflation is with hard assets... real property being one.

Or you could put your money in the bank, get zero percent interest, and have inflation diminish it's purchasing power by 10% a year.

Or you could put your money in the stock market which hasn't done squat in 10 years.

Smart money is going right back into real estate to get out of collapsing U.S. dollars and preserve wealth.