Don’t let the bearish talk get you down

It was difficult this week to avoid a few pieces of hitting-us-where-we-live news. The sky is falling, the news suggested, or -- well -- even worse: Housing prices are dropping.

According to a Cal State Fullerton economist, Orange County’s housing market will slow next year, though there was no talk of the “bubble” bursting -- which is every Newport-Mesa homeowner’s darkest nightmare.

But the forecast still was plenty bleak, suggesting that media home prices will be off 2% to 4% by the end of 2006. It cited central data numbers from the California Assn. of Realtors that showed Orange County home prices climbed 9% from July 2004 to July 2005. Doesn’t sound too bad, right? The jump a year earlier, between July 2003 and July 2004? A wallet-widening 30.7%.

Don’t go jump off Inspiration Point just yet, though (especially if you live near there, because housing prices in Corona del Mar continue to rise, according to DataQuick Information Systems, a La Jolla-based company that compiles real estate statistics). Sure, the forecast was plenty bleak, indeed, but also predictively so. Everyone knows there’s not much interest in “good” news, so why put together a study that predicts steady, good-for-us-all news? It’s not going to get you to pull out the calculator and figure out just how much equity you can escape to Arizona with, is it?

Plus, the numbers keep going up here and going down there, and then doing the exact opposite. DataQuick’s release this week of housing prices was logic-defying. Prices rose in Corona del Mar, eastern Balboa Peninsula and the neighborhoods east of the Upper Newport Bay. But prices dropped on Balboa Island, in Newport Coast and West Newport.

Setting aside people realizing that West Newport’s a party zone, can anyone truly think the market’s collapsing on Balboa Island or among Newport Coast’s sprawling mansions? Wait, it couldn’t be the barking of sea lions wrecking things on the island, could it? “The OC” didn’t switch locations to Chino, did it? Either would seem to have about as much credence for the ever-shifting numbers as any other factor.

If all the bearish talk got you down, you were able to take heart in the self-admittedly “bullish” outlook of Realtor Bill Cote of the Cote Realty Group. He was quick to bash DataQuick’s numbers to the Pilot, calling them incomplete -- and worse.

And he pulled out his own numbers that say through August, 150 homes had been sold in Newport Beach for $3 million or more. That compares nicely to the 119 homes sold through August 2004 at a price on the high side of $3 million.

Breathing a sigh of relief yet as you write the check to cover your home equity line of credit?