Burnham-Moores Center News and Events

SNL Financial--During the halcyon era of easy money through 2006, it was the place that made the California dream come true: Lounge at the beach, party in Hollywood and come home to your own yard and roof, which, by the way, would spit out thousands of dollars in equity each year.

Now it epitomizes the financial failures of the Golden State: It hosts a city with so many foreclosures that wild bobcats took over one house and a national magazine called the same city "one of the loneliest neighborhoods on the planet."

It is the Riverside-San Bernardino-Ontario, Calif., MSA; most people know it as the Inland Empire.

Data show that the housing bubble inflated and then popped with greater ferocity in the Inland Empire than most places in the nation. And as analysts try to look for a national housing recovery among strengthening sales in the face of growing foreclosures, the Inland Empire's numbers have been pulled to the extremes. As such, it is perhaps one of the most compelling test cases for whether a housing recovery is real.

If the current surge in first-time homebuyer demand can overcome the wave of foreclosure supply in the Inland Empire, it can happen anywhere.

... Norm Miller, a professor at the University of San Diego's Burnham-Moores Center for Real Estate, told SNL that the region was the nation's "subprime center," where both buyers and banks counted on price increases continuing ad infinitum.

"They tried to stretch for these homes, and somehow they thought they had ATMs. I mean, the ignorance level there was probably more concentrated," Miller said. (Full Story)