We told you there was a Bay Area real estate bubble. This mercurynews.com (motto: we were once a newspaper, really!) article caught our attention. Not only does it lend support to everything we said about peak housing prices in northwest Silicon Valley and other prime real estate markets, there’s another interesting reveal as well.

Bay Area housing recovery spreads from Silicon Valley to East Bay

By Pete Carey, San Jose Mercury News
Posted:   04/26/2013 06:54:33 AM PDT, Updated:   04/26/2013 06:54:55 AM PDT

The Bay Area’s overheated housing market is restoring thousands of homes to their pre-crash peak values in a ZIP-code-by-ZIP-code recovery that is rapidly spreading from Silicon Valley to the East Bay.

Thirty-four of 185 ZIP codes in five counties have regained or surpassed their bubble-era peak home value or are less than 1 percent from it, according to this newspaper’s analysis of February median values for all homes from online real estate site Zillow.

Another 49 ZIPs are within 15 percent of their previous highs, including 18 in the East Bay. A year ago, only part of leafy Palo Alto had regained the value it lost after Bay Area home values crested in 2006-07.

"Seven or eight years ago, there was really a bubble," said Richard Green, director of the Lusk Center for Real Estate at the University of Southern California. "Now it’s just good real estate where values are returning to near past peaks."

Yes, This Time It’s Different 4.0.  This is “good real estate” as opposed to Bay Area Bubble 3.0 which was also considered “good real estate,” as we can see by looking at some of the stories they ran in 2006.  Here’s one:

MercuryNews.com | 10/03/2006 | ‘Burdened’: Area owners pay a big chunk of their income for housing
Lenders and other home buying experts said they’re not surprised by the numbers, which they said reflect a long-running trend in the Bay Area. And some questioned whether the 30 percent figure was outdated, saying many people can afford to pay more.

[snip]

Lenders and real estate experts said home buyers in the Bay Area are used to paying more for housing than home buyers elsewhere, and that many, like Singer, use their homes as a savings plan. Most have figured out how to manage the extra debt, they said. In some cases, borrowers are making smaller down payments than previous generations of home buyers.

“(They) are going to make the lifestyle change necessary to own a home, which may mean that 50 percent of their income goes to their mortgage. . . . (They) don’t go out to dinner, they don’t go shopping anymore. It’s about changing their lifestyle,” said Andrea Lanier, a mortgage broker with the San Mateo office of Bankers Preferred Real Estate Loans.

But what we’d also like you to pay attention to is the map pictured above.  Green represents home values above the 2005-08 bubble previous peak, and red means the current value is below the pre-crash peak.  And by “values” they mean those Zestimate numbers that Zillow not only made up, they keep changing the historical data retroactively. Hope that’s science-y enough for you because we’re sure convinced! 

The first thing we noticed was that there’s green where we expect to find it: along the 280 spine.  Where’s the red? Why the East Bay, of course.  Now, let’s look at this map next to a few others we’ve featured in the past.  As always, you can click on any map to see a larger version.

First, here’s the map above next to a recent Zillow map of negative equity.  Difficult to have high home values when the homes are worth less than the “owners” owe on them.

Next, the infamous “Whole Foods vs Walmart” location maps.

And finally, the some of the “Real Bay Area” maps we’ve provided in the past.  2010 is on the left, 2008 on the right.

And here’s the granddaddy.

Hate to say we told you so, but we told you so — about ten kajillion times.  Eventually Bay Area Bubble 4.0 will raise East Bay home prices above the last peak, by which point The Real Bay Area (which most certainly does not include the East Bay) will be so expensive that even dual-income Google couples will be Priced. Out. For-EVEH!

Until Bay Area Bubble 4.0 goes all Bubblepopcalypse on us and we start preparing for Bay Area Bubble 5.0. As you load up on gold bars and dried beans, let us know what Open Houses you were checking out, because this is also your Weekend Open Thread!

And now for your weekly dose of gee-whiz, tech news!

Real estate apps can help, overwhelm homebuyers

By Dan Nakaso, San Jose Mercury News
Posted:   03/29/2013 06:00:00 PM PDT; Updated:   03/29/2013 06:57:43 PM PDT

Raj Aurora has been searching to buy his first home for the last three months, but hasn’t wasted time looking at condos he knows he won’t like and hasn’t even needed to meet his agent, all thanks to real estate apps that Aurora downloaded on his iPhone 5.

"We’ve already eliminated 20 to 30 houses without driving around," said Aurora, a 42-year-old chiropractor and part-time Web developer from Danville. "I don’t want to sit with (my agent) for eight hours driving from house to house. I’d rather hang out with my dog and my friends."

Aurora instead checks out properties virtually by glancing at his Zillow and Trulia apps throughout the day, then reviews any possibilities via text or email with his Danville real estate agent, Kevin R. Kieffer of Keller Williams Realty, whom Aurora has yet to see.

We think the Merc headline has an extraneous comma.  We also think Mr. Aurora doesn’t need to see Mr. Kieffer as long as Bay Area Bubble 4.0 ensures that homes are sold faster than they can be listed.

If you’ve been reading this site for more than a few days, you’re already aware that there are several real estate sites out there that have information on homes for sale. And if you’ve spent any time on the sites themselves, they probably let you know about their various apps for different devices.  Because, if you don’t want to be PRICED OUT FOREVER, you have to be ready to look at new listings at any possible moment, day or night.

Also, if you’re anything like Raj Aurora, you will do absolutely anything to avoid coming into contact with people you don’t have to.

This is your weekend Open Thread.  Let us know which, if any, real estate apps you use to find those open houses you’ll be looking at later today.  Be sure to mention the superiority of whatever hardware you’re using it on as well, because if you don’t have enough respect for your zip code, at least you can have it for your mobile device. Or talk about anything you want at all.  Remember, this isn’t having to actually talk to other people, so you can say anything.

Steve Wozniak’s former Los Gatos mansion for sale for $4.4 million

By Dan Nakaso, San Jose Mercury News
Posted:   03/19/2013 06:19:05 AM PDT; Updated:   03/20/2013 02:22:17 PM PDT

LOS GATOS — A six-bedroom, six-bath home formerly owned by Apple (AAPL) co-founder Steve Wozniak — complete with a bedroom mural of the "Little Mermaid," outdoor grotto and firefighters pole for the kids — is up for sale for $4.4 million.

The 7,500-square-foot home on Santa Rosa Drive near Shannon Road includes lots of high-end finishes and a few low-end personalized touches from Wozniak, such as the initials "S" and "W" that were scratched inside a drawer in the music room, said realty agent Arthur Sharif of Sotheby’s International Realty, who is listing the property.

In a brief telephone interview from an airplane as he prepared to fly from Florida to San Francisco on Monday, Wozniak told this newspaper that he liked the original three-bedroom home when he bought it for more than $1 million about 1986.

"I liked the architecture very much but the home kind of grew as my family extended," Wozniak said.

300 SANTA ROSA Dr
Los Gatos, CA 95032
$4,395,000

6 Beds
7 Baths
7,500 Sq. Ft.
$586 / Sq. Ft.
Built: 1986
Lot Size: 1.19 Acres
On Redfin: 12 days
Property Type: Detached Single Family
Stories: Tri-Level
Community: Los Gatos/Monte Sereno
MLS#: 81307599
Style: Modern/High Tech, Contemporary
View: Mountains, Canyon, Valley
County: Santa Clara

Originally built for Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, This exquisite 7500 sq/ft, 6 Bed, 8 Bath on 1.19 acres, minutes to Los Gatos Blvd, combines post-modern style with majestic natural views. It is a natural abode full of light and warmth Euro chefs kitchen, wraparound terraces. Recent major re-design and renovation, one of a kind indoor/outdoor kids play area, pool w/ waterfall, Koi Pond +++.

Upcoming Open Houses

Sunday, Mar 24: 1:00-4:30 pm

Yes, open today! Burbed meet-up!  The password is When can I submit my overbid?

News media from all over are falling all over themselves reporting that a house once owned by Steve Wozniak is for sale. For some reason, when it was for sale last year, this did not happen.  We mentioned it, though.

It’s interesting reading all these sites. You might learn something if you do, like where Woz is living now. (Yes, that’s it on the right.  Where he is now, not the place above.) 

And the comments show most of them haven’t sussed to the fact that Woz hasn’t lived at the Santa Rosa house since 2004.  Some of the improvements he put in the house are still there, but articles don’t mention all of them. The secret kids’ room complex is still there:

It’s a warren of rooms accessed through a tiny, kid-size door surrounded by elaborate molding with a dinosaur design. The complex is a series of little rooms, nooks and crannies connected by ladders, stairs and crawl spaces. Any child would love to wiggle through the complex and curl up on the floor pillows with a book or toy. You can exit via the dinosaur door or slide out on the fireman’s pole.

The listing history is fairly interesting. After the curve-inducing renovation in 2006, the house was listed for even more (we heard ten million but it’s not in Zillow’s listing history).  Whoops.

Also, don’t worry about The Woz running off to Australia.  That’s not planned for a few more years.  So if you do buy his old house, feel free to ring him up and him the best way to unstop the grotto drain.

We’ve made the call on Bay Area Bubble 4.0, now we’re just lining up the evidence.  Palo Alto began heating up and blowing past peak pricing last year.  The proof of another housing bubble, though, is when the increasing prices and the bidding frenzy and the sales velocity measured in Hours on Market rather than Days and the large number of listings marked Pending/Do Not Show start overwhelming the Not So Special parts of the region.

Here is Evidence For a Bay Area Housing Bubble #1,726: Frenzy for condos.  CONDOS.  In MILPITAS.

Bay Area condos’ tight supply has buyers scrambling

By Pete Carey, San Jose Mercury News
Posted:   02/18/2013 04:00:00 AM PST | Updated:   02/18/2013 08:19:38 AM PST

The Bay Area’s market for condominiums and townhouses has seldom been hotter. Existing units are selling in record time with multiple offers, and new ones are being snapped up before there’s even a model home to see.

Just ask Niha Singh. Last month, Singh, a 27-year-old Silicon Valley computer engineer, and her husband tried to buy one of 12 units in a new townhouse development under construction in Milpitas. Even though they’d car-camped outside the developer’s office, they ended up on a waiting list.

"When we got there on Friday, there was already a line," she said. "People were camping out, some of them for six days before the date of release."

Across the Bay Area, buyers are fighting for a limited supply of new and existing condos. Investors have already snapped up many foreclosures and short sales and are renting them out, while owners who might sell in a typical market are either still on the sidelines watching prices rise or are underwater and can’t afford to sell. And demand has been growing.

Wasn’t it just a couple of years ago we were reading about condo complexes that had reverted to all-rental buildings (also known as apartments)?  Why yes, it was.  But obviously Milpitas is Much More Special than Downtown San Jose.  Also Three Sixty is Five days short of even a Regular Year.

People camping out for five days in front of a Milpitas development not enough? Want more evidence of Bubble 4.0?  You think a seller’s market in Milpitas condos is reaching?  At least Milpitas is in the same area code as Google.

Condos in Castro Valley sold in 11 days in December, compared with 82 days in 2011, the Bay East Association of Realtors reported. In Pleasanton, the average number of days on the market dropped from 52 days in December 2011 to 10 days last December.

Castro Valley.  You know, Gateway to Hayward, City of Diversity.  We’re putting in our sell order when Stockton comes back.

Sometimes a picture explains what words cannot.

Rising home values push more Bay Area homes above water, Zillow says

By Pete Carey, San Jose Mercury News

Posted: 02/21/2013 06:26:11 AM PST, Updated: 02/21/2013 06:26:39 AM PST

Rising prices pushed thousands of Bay Area homes back above water last year, according to a report released Wednesday, another sign that the region's housing crisis is easing as the economy recovers.

The report, by the housing website Zillow, shows drops across the region in the number of homes that are underwater — worth less than the value of their mortgages.

More than 56,826 homes bobbed back above water across seven counties of the Bay Area in 2012, Zillow reported. That still leaves 205,986 homes with a total negative equity of $31.5 billion.

Now let's see the graphic. See? Fewer homes are underwater! That means more of them are Special, so more are also in the Real Bay Area! They must be making more Real Bay Area land.

Glad we could clear this up.

Here’s some news from the Merc (motto: Also available on paper!) that won’t come as a surprise to anyone who studied economics.

Bay Area rents are flattening out, new study says

By Pete Carey, San Jose Mercury News
Posted:   01/21/2013 05:47:55 PM PST; Updated:   01/22/2013 05:25:31 AM PST

The torrid pace of rent increases in the Bay Area is slowing, according to a survey of apartment complexes released Monday.

Average rents in the East Bay, Peninsula and San Francisco were nearly unchanged in the fourth quarter of last year and declined slightly in the South Bay, according to RealFacts, a Novato consulting group that tracks rents in apartment complexes with 50 or more units. That compares with the first half of the year, when some areas saw quarterly increases of 4 percent.

Some renters may be deciding that interest rates and low prices have made the time right to buy a condo, and that may account for some of the leveling off of rents, a RealFacts representative said. Occupancy rates for apartments have flattened out while condo sales were in the double digits in December from a year earlier in Alameda, Contra Costa, Santa Clara and San Mateo counties.

This is supply and demand.  If people are buying houses, then they don’t need apartments.  If people are buying houses, they don’t need to rent them, either.  So who loses in a hot housing market?  The landlord.

Are you noticing rents flattening, or even going down? Are more people moving because they bought something, or do new renters spring up instantly to replace them?  Are your rental properties still generating long lines and people offering to fight each other for the right to write you checks?

Thanks very much to Burbed reader Real Estater, who passes along the news that We’re Number One.  Again.  That is, We’re Number One as long as you don’t count ranches with a hundred thousand acres in Montana.

Silicon Valley real estate stunner: Woodside estate sells for $117.5 million

By Pete Carey, SJ Mercury News
Posted:   01/25/2013 07:00:12 PM PST; Updated:   01/25/2013 09:13:29 PM PST

WOODSIDE — A legendary investor’s sprawling estate here has sold for $117.5 million, one of the highest prices ever for a residential property in the U.S.

The sale price eclipses the previous Silicon Valley record of $100 million paid for a Los Altos Hills mansion by Russian investor Yuri Milner in 2011 and comes amid a red-hot market for luxury home sales in Silicon Valley and the Peninsula.

The private sale was closed in November between the owner, private equity investor Tully M. Friedman, and an undisclosed buyer represented by SV Projects, according to public records.

Nice going, San Jose Mercury “We once were a real News organization! Really!”  You’re reporting on a record-breaking property sale and couldn’t find any pictures of the property?  And it’s not like you didn’t have a few leads to go look for them.  Like the one from SFLuxe you alluded to at the end of your story and didn’t even hotlink in.

Their article has several excellent photos of delicious houseporn, all credited to photographer Jay Graham.

SFLuxe states their article is an exclusive, so they must have an arrangement with Graham to feature his photos.  Do check out their article.  In the meantime, Redfin is redirecting any requests to see the property record with a lovely redirect loop, so let’s see what we can find out elsewhere.

Update 20:50 — The Redfin link is working again but it’s been somewhat scrubbed. What a coinky-dinky.

360 Mountain Home Rd
Woodside, CA 94062

California > Redwood City > 94062 
Not for Sale
Zestimate: $19,227,778
Rent Zestimate: $12,677/mo
Est. Mortgage:
$69,193/mo

Bedrooms:4 beds
Bathrooms:4.5 baths
Single Family:8,930 sq ft
Lot:391,604 sq ft
Year Built:2005
Last Sold:Jul 1997 for $8,000,000
Parking:Garage
 
Description
This 8930 square foot single family home has 4 bedrooms and 4.5 bathrooms. It is located at 360 Mountain Home Rd Woodside, California.

Sure makes you wonder about those Zestimates when they’re off by 500%, although it’s hard to model paying top dollar for bragging rights.

We’re not going to find much in the public real estate websites, because the property was never listed for sale.  Still, the SFLuxe article gives a few hints.  The architect is Allan Greenburg, who featured four photos of the house in his online portfolio:

Woodside Residence
California

This northern California home sits in an elaborate hilltop garden. Reflecting the strong Palladian tradition in the United States, it is planned around hyphens and dependencies and features a double volume, elliptical garden room.

Photo: Michael Biondo

And as to why we are almost Number One in expensive real estate transactions?  There’s that 124,000 acre ranch in Montana that Stan Kroenke bought, listed for $132.5 million (including the cattle).

Update 20:50: Adding in an aerial shot.  Note the road at the side of the house is not where the entrance is, that’s far off beyond the lower right.

Anyway, eat your heart out, Yuri Milner.

Well, maybe a seafood fork.  A possible seafood fork.  Size extra-small.  In 2014.  Maybe.

The third rail of real estate may be getting some modifications, thanks to the new obstruction-proof California Legislature.  Now that both houses have 2/3 Democratic Party members, they could raise taxes without a single Republican vote of support.  But to modify Proposition 13, only an initiative passed by California voters will do.  The difference is that Legislators are now discussing these changes openly, sensing the era of tax cuts is also due for Fork Facetime.

California Democrats signal they want to reform Proposition 13

By Steven Harmon, San Jose Mercury News
Posted: 12/29/2012 01:00:00 PM PST, Updated: 12/29/2012 05:41:17 PM PST

SACRAMENTO — The third rail of California politics may not be as deadly as once thought.

Three and a half decades after the passage of Proposition 13 shook the political landscape in California and sparked a taxpayer revolt across America, voters appear to be warming up to the idea of reforming the initiative as long as protections for homeowners stay intact.

And the apparent sea change in public attitudes, combined with the two-thirds majorities Democrats now hold in both chambers of the Legislature, has emboldened some politicians to take aim at the iconic measure.

“It is time for a fix, because Proposition 13 is broken,” said Assemblyman Tom Ammiano, D-San Francisco, who plans to introduce a bill next year aimed at forcing businesses to pay higher property taxes.

The landmark 1978 measure rolled back property taxes and capped yearly increases until a property is sold, but critics say one of its unintended consequences was shifting more of the Golden State’s property tax burden from businesses to homeowners.

This isn’t the first time we’ve noted the havoc wreaked by Prop 13, and we’re hardly the only ones doing so.

Reforms being discussed include a “split roll” where commercial property is handled differently from residential, and lowering the threshhold for parcel taxes from 66 2/3 to 55 percent.  58 percent of Californians polled supported the split roll concept, where commercial property would be reassessed every 6 or 12 months.  Residential property would continue with assessment at time of sale with a 2% maximum annual increase.  However, 60 percent of those polled still “support” Prop 13.

In addition, Assemblyman Tom Ammiano wishes to address a loophole where corporate-owned property isn’t even reassessed when sold, because more than 50% of ownership must change hands.  Corporations simply constructed shell entities to avoid the 50% trigger despite buying and selling their entire interest in real properties.  For exaple, the E&J Gallo Company bought the 1765 acre Louis M Martini vineyards by having 12 family members buy individual shares, each under the 50 percent trigger.  The property remains assessed at the original low value because of this maneuver.

Even Google, a relatively new corporation, benefits from the complex dance of real estate partnerships, trusts, holding companies, and leases.  Some of their buildings sit on land owned by the pre-Prop 13 owner and his family trust, via a ground lease.  The 13.7 acre tract was assessed at $789,635 in 2009 and would have been worth $41 million without a single structure on it.  State law prevents land reassessment if a lease of over 35 years exists.  The buildings on the land were assessed at $38 million.

Before Prop 13 passed, business and residential property produced about the same share of state revenues, but now residential property generates 70 percent of property taxes.  California has also bid adieu to its excellent state colleges and universities, as well as its various public school systems, since property taxes helped fund the former and were primary support of the latter.

Feel free to grouse about money-grubbing state officials or the unfairness of our tax code.

Did you know that there’s a Real Estate department at UC Berkeley?  No, we don’t mean that Cal or the Regents are buying up foreclosed homes nearby.  There is an actual academic department that studies and teaches real estate.

As an academic discipline.

To, among other students, real estate “professionals.”

At UC Berkeley.

The crown jewel of our taxpayer-funded college system.

Yes, there is an actual place called the Fisher Center for Real Estate and Urban Economics and it’s part of Cal’s Haas School of Business.  Here’s their mission statement:

The mission of the Fisher Center for Real Estate & Urban Economics (FCREUE) is to educate students and real estate professionals and to support and conduct research on real estate, urban economics, the California economy, land use, and public policy.

Well, that doesn’t have to be a crisis signifying the lack of integrity of academia, does it?  If they study real estate in a disciplined, methodical and rigorous manner, the subject could certainly be well worth the effort.

Then again, maybe not.

In Tuesday’s SJ Mercury News, Professor Emeritus Kenneth T. Rosen, who is the chairman of the Fisher center, was quoted for a story on the improvement of home values in the second quarter .  Let’s listen in on his brilliant observations on the problem of a stalled regional housing market due to negative equity:

“It’s becoming less negative as house prices are going up around the Bay Area… It only affects those people who bought at the peak two or three years. Part of the reason they have negative equity is that they borrowed a lot of money.”

Ya think?

Here’s something to deepen your observation of Easter.  While devout Christians celebrate the resurrection of Jesus today, this man’s passing on Good Friday leads to a kind of different kind of immortality, and we are not talking about paintings.

Thomas Kinkade, one of nation’s most popular painters, dies suddenly in Los Gatos at 54

By Mike Rosenberg, San Jose Mercury News
Posted:  04/06/2012 06:43:30 PM PDT; Updated:  04/07/2012 03:41:26 AM PDT

Thomas Kinkade, the “Painter of Light” and one of the most popular artists in America, died suddenly Friday at his Los Gatos home. He was 54.

His family said in a statement that his death appeared to be from natural causes.

“Thom provided a wonderful life for his family,” his wife, Nanette, said in a statement. “We are shocked and saddened by his death.”

His paintings are hanging in an estimated one of every 20 homes in the United States. Fans cite the warm, familiar feeling of his mass-produced works of art, while it has become fashionable for art critics to dismiss his pieces as tacky. In any event, his prints of idyllic cottages and bucolic garden gates helped establish a brand — famed for their painted highlights — not commonly seen in the art world.

“I’m a warrior for light,” Kinkade told the Mercury News in 2002, alluding not just to his technical skill at creating light on canvas but to the medieval practice of using light to symbolize the divine. “With whatever talent and resources I have, I’m trying to bring light to penetrate the darkness many people feel.”

Now, if you want to instead refer to the Los Gatos Patch (an AOL-owned series of hyperlocal blogs), Kinkade actually died in Monte Sereno, while with his live-in girlfriend, as he had been estranged from his wife for two years.  That would explain why his family was in Australia at the time of his death.  Kincade’s passing is indeed relevant to the Real Bay Area, since he lived in Los Gatos.  Or Monte Sereno, depending on which reported version you prefer.  But this scan of the firefighters’ frequency shows an engine was dispatched to 16342 Ridgecrest Ave, due to a 54 year old male “drinking all night, not moving.”  That address is owned by someone named Kinkade, and also had an “under influence of drugs/alcohol” arrest there last year.  The address is missing from most property databases, though, including the Recorder’s Office.

Kinkade certainly has his staunch supporters and determined detractors.  This Mercury News article generated 150 comments in just a few hours and had more than 250 by the following afternoon.  Most Merc articles draw under 20 comments.  The NY Times obituary generated an even more derisive stream of criticism, while the Washington Post put the negative commentary in the article itself.  The daddy of all Kinkade-dissing news items has to go to this 2006 Los Angeles Times piece, though.

But there’s an aspect of Thomas Kinkade that had managed to elude us all this time.  It turns out that his kitschy paintings of cottages in the woods inspired multiple housing developments.

That’s right, for the fan who isn’t content with buying a snowglobe or a throw rug, there were plans for actual tract houses trying to look like his paintings.    And one of the first such developments, the Village at Hiddenbrooke, was built in Vallejo right as dot.com went dot.bomb in 2001.  The homes were 1800-2600 square feet on 4000 square foot lots.  The large photo above is interior décor from one of those model homes.  Most of the links to the builder and the development in the Salon article are now defunct.

It’s not easy figuring out which streets in Hiddenbrooke are part of The Village.  And given that the builder was London-based, that’s a particularly interesting name for a community accused of being somewhat, um, ersatz.  Here’s a home that sold last year, and do check out its history, because it sold for less in 2011 than when it was sold new nine years beforehand.  You can check out the neighborhood on Redfin but nothing seems to be for sale there now.

However, Kinkade did not stop with just the one housing development in Vallejo.

The photo at right shows the team planning for five Kinkade-inspired $4 to $6 million luxury homes around Lake Coeur d’Alene in Idaho named The Gates of Coeur d’Alene.  This project was launched in (of course) 2006, at the height of bubblicious housing insanity.

Plans for 100 homes based on the cottage paintings were being developed later that winter for a project in Columbia, Missouri called The Gates at Old Hawthorne.  Prices were expected to come in at $500,000 to $1 million.  It’s not clear if any of these plans came to fruition, as the builder’s website no longer seems to exist.  This 2007 article reflects the typical attitude of housing boosters, acknowledging the slowdown but insisting that It’s Special Here and full steam ahead for the Kinkade development:

The homes are being built at a time when the U.S. home market is declining. However, Columbia and Boone County have been able to avoid the national trend. The median price for new single-family homes in Boone County has steadily increased, going from around $136,000 in May 2003 to a little over $188,000 in May of this year. And while the price of new homes is rising, the number of homes being built has decreased from 79 single-family units in May 2003 to 52 this May.

“In general, our home market is good, (but) it’s not as good as last year’s,” said Brent Jones, president of the Columbia Board of Realtors. According to Jones, the present home market is a buyer’s market. The effects of the market are even more apparent in the sale of high-end houses, like the Kinkade homes. […]

“News stories give the idea that the market is homogenous,” Jones said. He cited cities that have experienced extreme home appreciation, and are now experiencing just as extreme depreciation. The Columbia market is relatively stable and hasn’t had the appreciation that other markets have experienced, .

However, market fluctuations are not a concern for HST.

“One of the reasons we came to Columbia is because Columbia’s economy is so strong,” Stewart said. Sales of the Kinkade houses are surpassing the inventory, Stewart added.

There is no evidence that either of these Kinkade-inspired home developments were ever built.  Most references to them are from 2006, when everyone was drunk on Kool-aid.  Here’s an application for an alternative use for the Missouri land, which suggests nothing was ever built from the Kinkade project.  The Gates of Old Hawthorne website is gone, and here are some empty lots for sale from that project.

Just like the empty cave in today’s Holiday Story.

Have yourselves a Happy Easter, and remember: This means Spring Bounce has begun!