Can't this wait until Monday?

This is not what Los Angeles area homeowners want to see on the front page of the local paper when they wake up on a Sunday morning. Can't the newspaper just wait until Monday morning to provide yet more bad news about the local housing market?


The online version of the story carries an even more dour title, "Better-heeled failing home economics too", all of this sure to spoil the coffee-drinking, lounging-around in slippers sort of mood that many look forward to at this time of the week.

The inland empire is apparently ground-zero for foreclosures in the greater Los Angeles area - the last area to inflate in price is also the first to run into serious trouble.

Last summer when we were through that area on the way to Las Vegas they still had those "No Money Down, Easy Qualifying" signs sprinkled liberally throughout the desert. We'll be through there again next week and will take note of any change in the signage, though it is unlikely that we'll stop and have a look around.

It all sounds a bit depressing.

Of all the ways to lose your home, few are as shameful as having the sheriff lock you out. Yet Strickland regularly sees such people.

"They say, 'You're really going to evict me? I'm going to lose my house? How can you do that?' I say, 'I've got a court order,' " the deputy says.

He recently went to do an eviction at a gated community in Chino Hills. The foreclosed owner, not realizing he was out of time and luck, was still trying to sell the place.

As soon as he noticed Strickland, he jumped in his car and drove off, leaving a prospective buyer bewildered at the curb.

Isn't there some cheerier news to fill up the front page with?

Why, there it is right next to the story about foreclosures - Johnny Depp and the Pirates of the Caribbean. Everybody loves Johnny Depp - and lovable movie pirates too.

The newspaper really should consider what kind of an effect they might be having on a reading public who view real estate wealth as a birthright.


Next time, they should really just expand the pirate story to take up the space occupied by the "more bad news about housing" story - everyone will be better off for it. Otherwise, they're going to get blamed for making the problems in housing even worse.

Few complained about local newspapers helping to push home prices higher by simply reporting what they saw going on around them, but many are likely to object to this coverage now that people are getting booted out of homes they never really could afford and prices are going in the other direction.

ooo

Doing everything that can be done here to help brighten the day, admittedly a bit late on Sunday afternoon, here's this week's cartoon from The Economist: