[quote author="awgee" date=1217733180]Ipop - Do you think you and I do not get along?</blockquote>
I think we get along just fine awgee, especially since I have grown accustomed to your humor and wit over these many months...
I agree MOM sales numbers have too much seasonality to them to be very meaningful. I reduce the impact of the seasonality of those figures by viewing them in the context of months inventory. For example, during the period roughly from the end of April 2007 through the end of July 2007, 170 or so homes were added to inventory in Irvine. For the same period this year, a decrease of approximately 100 units... While YOY sales are down considerably, so is YOY inventory, which means the months inventory figure is fairly consistent with last year's figure.
Happy to agree to disagree with you. You see no end in sight, I see what I believe to be non-seasonal slowing in the rate of decline in prices, i.e. some bit of stabilization. Only time will time if that is the case... If no bit of stabilization in the market has occurred, and this bounce is only dead cat / seasonal, I'd expect us to return to depreciation rates of 3-4% or greater such as we experienced between November 2007 and February 2008. IMHO we will not see that magnitude of nominal declines going forward into this correction.