How low? Almost half in L.A. poll say at least 25 percent lower

The online poll to the right from this LA Times story about "sharp" home price declines in Southern California is surely one of the more biased surveys of current sentiment toward housing, but it does have some meaning.

First, what would have seemed unthinkable just a couple years ago - a selection of choices for home price declines from minus 10 percent to more than 25 percent (that would be $100,000+ off of the 2006 median home price) - now seems to be conventional wisdom.

Aside from the analysts at the National Association of Realtors, there seems to be little question that home prices are going down - it's really just a matter of how far and for how long.

This being a non-scientific poll where anyone can vote (some probably doing so many times), the results likely demonstrate as much schadenfreude as they do real sentiment. After all, those on the outside looking in on the late great housing boom for most of this decade are eager to see prices go lower so they too can do what families have done for decades and decades - buy a home for their family without feeling like a sucker.

These LA Times readers were surely willing to participate in the survey and probably weren't bashful about the magnitude of the decline they foresaw or perhaps are hoping for (more interesting poll results may have been had if, instead of stopping at "more than 25%", they continued in 10 percent increments beyond 50 percent).

As for homeowners in Southern California who read the online edition of the LA Times, most of them who do pay attention to home prices are probably loathe to think that they are less wealthy than a year ago and may be more likely to quickly turn away from a news story that heralds "sharp" price declines. These folks probably wouldn't participate in a poll such as this at all, a view that was perhaps exacerbated by there being no selection other than price declines.

Like stocks back in 2001 and 2002, some people just don't want to know about this sort of thing - they'd rather believe home prices are the same as what the one neighbor got in 2005, not what the other neighbor is asking in 2007.

As investment account statements received in the mail were discarded unopened very early in the decade, reports of falling home prices are more likely to be ignored than heeded by those with a vested interest. It's more likely that those wanting to acquire a vested interest in real estate (at much lower prices) were the real factors in this poll.