Bay area housing market has cracked

To all my friends in the bay area: I told you so, I told you so, I told you so... :-/

SF Chronicle:

“Twenty percent of Bay Area homeowners owe more on their mortgages than their homes are worth, according to a study being released today. This dubious distinction has entered the American lexicon as an all-too-familiar term - being underwater.

As home values continue to plunge, the real estate valuation service Zillow.com said that 20.76 percent of all homes in the nine-county Bay Area are underwater. The rate is much higher than the national average of 1 in 7 homes, or 14.3 percent. That’s because the Bay Area - like most of California - was a classic bubble market, where buyers in recent years paid overinflated prices for homes that now are rapidly losing value in the market downturn.”

(Via Barry Ritholtz.)