by Calculated Risk on 7/02/2008 06:10:00 PM

Peter Viles at the L.A. Times provides some excerpts from an analyst report: Analyst sees 'ghost town' in Inland Empire

"At several properties, there were a significant number of fully built homes sitting vacant along with a large number of additional homes still under construction," Sandler O'Neill & Partners analyst Aaron Deer wrote today after touring developments in Corona and Ontario. "At one master plan community, the entire development appeared to be vacant -- with the exception of crews working on new construction, it was a ghost town."
...
"Perhaps the most interesting aspect to the development was what it revealed about the nature of the housing boom: that at the peak even the most undesirable and remote locations were worthy of expensive, high-end homes."

These remotes areas are getting crushed. Not only are house prices falling in general, but in areas like the Inland Empire a large percentage of homeowners worked in real estate (construction, mortgage brokers, real estate agents, etc.), so the unemployment rate is rising faster than for other areas. Add in almost $5 per gallon gasoline, and that makes these areas uneconomical, especially for people with large SUVs and trucks (like construction workers).