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Outside the Capitol, in the neighborhoods of Sacramento and beyond, mortgage defaults were already climbing. But New Century was still all pedal and no brakes. Loan volume remained brisk, and the company seemed headed for another blockbuster year.

Just a couple of weeks later, New Century was essentially kaput, done in by runaway loan defaults and a panic among investors. Its shocking demise marked the start of a crisis in the mortgage industry that has rattled Wall Street and raised fears of a recession.

In a sense, New Century and other fallen lenders -- as well as homeowners who are losing their properties -- are victims of history. Until now, most experts say, the housing market had never undergone a serious swoon as long as the economy was still growing. Lenders took comfort in the argument that only a recession could do major harm to the housing sector and ignored signs that the market was going cold.

"The hubris of the period was driven ... by the thought that the economy was on sound footing," said Mark Zandi, chief economist at national consulting firm Moody's Economy.com. "That argument convinced the homebuilders and the lenders and added to the frenzy."

Zandi and others say the slump's peculiar nature contributed to the severity of the problem. The absence of a recession kept lenders running nearly full tilt until it was too late.

The total volume of subprime loans nationally fell less than 4 percent in 2006, even as defaults and foreclosures were starting to spike, according to data compiled by Credit Suisse. Some big lenders never really did apply the brakes: New Century's loan volume was down a mere 1.3 percent through the end of February, or about two weeks before trading in the company's stock was suspended.

"The mentality was ... the economy's great and everything's fine," said Chris Thornberg, head of Beacon Economics consulting firm in Los Angeles. "That was the mentality that to some extent drove these excesses."

For now, unemployment remains relatively low. But the lack of historical precedent has lent an ominous feel to the housing slump, making it harder to predict what the impact will be on the overall economy.

"We haven't faced this before," said Howard Roth, chief economist at the state Department of Finance. "It may well be a new phenomenon that we're seeing -- a downturn in the housing sector slowing down the overall economy."

Mortgage specialist Heather Fern-Luzzi, with two decades of experience in the business, thought she'd seen it all. But this downturn, which just claimed her job, has her baffled.

"There's nothing to compare it to," said Fern-Luzzi, the Roseville branch manager of recently collapsed mortgage lender First Magnus Financial Corp.

"I've seen it since the 1980s -- I've been in downward markets and there's always been the light at the end of the tunnel," she said as she packed files for shipment to First Magnus' headquarters in Arizona. "This one seems to be different."

This year several hundred people in the capital region mortgage industry already have found themselves out of jobs. Many are having to go outside their industry for work or to switch careers.

"They might have to look at other areas of finance," said David Lyons, labor market consultant at the state Employment Development Department. "There are probably opportunities in the commercial and industrial side. They'll want to look at their skills and other industries that may be growing. They're out there. They just have to do a little job searching."

The ongoing rash of foreclosures has spooked potential homebuyers even though the job market is in decent shape, said veteran Sacramento real estate agent Leigh Rutledge. The dark cloud won't lift soon.

"We've just got a long ways to go with all this subprime stuff," she said.

The last great housing downturn in California, begun in the early 1990s, followed a more recognizable pattern. The end of the Cold War clobbered California's aerospace and military sectors, causing massive layoffs.

In Sacramento, all three military bases ultimately closed, and unemployment topped 9 percent. Skilled construction workers deserted Sacramento for cities like Phoenix and Las Vegas. No wonder home prices went into a tailspin that lasted eight years.

This time, housing experienced a once-in-a-lifetime boom caused by excessively loose lending standards. Interest-only loans and other exotic products made homeowners out of millions with iffy credit histories. The exploding secondary market -- made up of institutional investors, many of them from overseas, willing to purchase those loans -- provided the fuel.

"Globalization had a lot to do with this," said Greg Sandler, founder of Roseville-based 1st National Home Loans. "Essentially, we're not playing with the same road map here. This is a different downturn than ever before."

Loose loans have made the collapse unusually swift. Defaults and foreclosures have increased at a much faster pace than in previous slumps. In the 1990s, even with unemployment soaring, it took five years for defaults in Sacramento County to double, according to DataQuick Information Systems. This time, the default volume has more than tripled in a little over a year. Defaults are the first step toward foreclosure.

"It's more severe now; it's much faster," said Michael Carney, a professor of finance and real estate at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona, and director of the nonprofit Real Estate Research Council.

The meltdown in the mortgage business could take the economy into a recession, said Stuart Gabriel, director of the Ziman Center for Real Estate at UCLA.

"This credit crunch is terribly exacerbating the downturn in housing," he said. "The longer this credit crunch persists, and the wider the implications, the more likely we will have a general economic downturn."

Unemployment has edged up to 5.3 percent statewide. But that's well below the 6.9 percent recorded in 2003, during the last economic downturn, or the 9.9 percent in 1992, the peak of the 1990s recession.

The current slowdown has been offset by strength in commercial and industrial construction. State government is hiring again, a boost for Sacramento.

"Fundamentally, I think we have good job growth in other sectors," said EDD's Lyons.

Richard Brown, chief economist at the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., said he believes a recession can be avoided. "I would say the economic fundamentals ultimately win out," he said.

But with housing clearly stressing the economy, there's cause for concern. Many believe the housing market won't improve until late 2008, at the earliest. The slump is hurting retailers, particularly home-improvement chains. Car sales are affected, too, as consumers are less apt to borrow against their home equity to make big purchases.

"First, we had construction, then financing, now furniture," said economist G.U. Krueger of Institutional Housing Partners, an investment firm in Irvine. "It's now spreading into the broader segments of the economy.

"We're still fortunate that the part of the economy that has nothing to do with real estate is still relatively strong. We're lucky the consumer (spending) is holding up as much as it has. We're lucky the jobs are holding up as much as they are. That's, of course, the thing to watch."

Surplus homes help keep area rental rates low

By Jim Wasserman -- Bee Staff Writer
October 19, 2006

Sacramento-area renters continue to pay some of California's slowest-rising rents, even as the monthly payments have risen sharply the past year in most of the state's other major cities, according to an apartment industry researcher.

The reason: more supply than demand in a Sacramento region that built thousands of new apartments in recent years. The area's 94.2 percent occupancy rate -- barely up from 93.9 percent a year ago -- is the lowest for all of California's 23 largest metro areas, according to Novato-based RealFacts, which tracks trends in the apartment industry.

Industry experts also report a growing surge in single-family homes being rented as owners tire of trying to sell them in a sluggish housing market. That trend has actually led to lower rents in some cases and is likely to play a significant role in keeping apartment occupancy rates lower.

"I've actually seen rents go down," said Sheri Lutrrell of Sacramento-based Pacifica Management, which leases houses. "Even my real strong markets like Gold River, I'm lowering them $200 or $300."

Janet Regan, a broker with Citrus Heights-based Horizon Properties and president of the Sacramento chapter of the National Association of Residential Property Managers, said some home sellers are giving up.

"We use to have all these different reasons why people put up their houses for rent. Now it's, 'I can't sell my house,' " she said. "These are people who have moved to other cities and other states. They're stressing."

According to RealFacts, the region's average monthly rent at apartment communities was $948 in July, August and September, a $24 increase from the same time last year. Monthly rent averaged $710 in Yuba and Sutter counties. The highest rents for the 378 large area apartment communities surveyed by RealFacts was $1,250 in Davis and $1,169 in Folsom.

Statewide, rents average $1,339 a month.

The combination of supply and demand factors is pushing the region toward a fourth year of slow-rising rents, even though analysts have maintained through much of 2006 that the trend is nearing its end.

Now, Barbara Lemaster of Sacramento-based M&M Property Management, one of the region's largest apartment managers, believes the trend to slow-rising rents may end after the winter months.

"I have clients who live in the Bay Area and say rents have gone up. I haven't seen it happen yet," she said.

Rents have risen just 2.6 percent the past year in El Dorado, Placer, Sacramento and Yolo counties, and 1.3 percent in Yuba and Sutter counties, RealFacts reported.

That compares with a 10.4 percent rise in San Jose, 7.5 percent in the overall Bay Area and 7.4 percent in Los Angeles and Long Beach. Rents also have risen 6 percent or more in Bakersfield and Riverside-San Bernardino as more residents compete for fewer apartments.

Data for Amador and Nevada counties were not available.

"Sacramento definitely has lagged, particularly when you compare it to the Bay Area," said RealFacts spokesman Chris Bates.

An estimated 35 percent of households in the capital region rent.

Region is due for rent increase

High home prices, building crunch favor landlords, experts say.

By Jim Wasserman -- Bee Staff Writer
Tuesday, June 6, 2006

Renters Robine and Greg Anderson have lived in this Citrus Heights rental home for about a year and have been renting for 21 years. The couple are waiting for housing prices to cool off before they buy a home. Compared to other U.S. metropolitan areas, average rent increases in Sacramento have been much smaller, which allow the couple to save. Sacramento Bee/Randy Pench

Bring on the moving vans. Renters rule the market -- at least for now.

Unlike their counterparts in many apartment markets across the country, Sacramento-area renters have dodged fast-rising prices and a growing shortage of rentals. In fact, the region has become one of the nation's most stable for renters and some still get move-in incentives.

But don't count on it lasting much longer.

By most accounts, capital-area renters are only months away from the ascending prices that are squeezing paychecks throughout California and much of the United States. Nationally, rising rents are already considered a key driver alongside higher gasoline prices for a sharp 0.6 percent jump in April's consumer price index. "You haven't had the strong rent growth yet. It is coming," said Greg Willett, vice president for analysis and research at M/PF YieldStar, a Texas-based apartment industry consultant.

When, exactly, is still anyone's guess.

But analysts say a confluence of factors in El Dorado, Placer, Sacramento and Yolo counties makes fewer apartment vacancies and rising rents almost inevitable. For the 35 percent of area residents who rent their housing, that means less money for other necessities and an even harder time saving to buy homes.

A significant factor for demand gaining on supply: mortgage rates. They're at four-year highs amid lofty home prices, and freezing out scores of would-be buyers. Likewise, a mounting standoff between buyers who want dramatically lower prices and sellers not ready to offer them is bottling up even more people in rental units.

"We're hoping prices are going to drop in a while," said renter Robine Anderson of Citrus Heights. "It's cheaper right now to rent than to buy so we can save more money for a down payment."

Even with 11,344 homes in the four-county region for sale in April, Anderson and her husband expect to rent until sometime next year.

"Personally, I'm just kind of waiting for things to even out a little bit and get a good deal," she said. "We're just trying to be sensible about it."

Analysts suggest three more reasons for eventual hikes in a region where rents average $921 a month, according to YieldStar.

• Market-rate apartment construction and investor interest have stalled amid stagnant rents and rising building costs.

Builders plan only 384 new market-rate apartments in the four-county area next year, compared to 3,500 in 2004, says a local analysis by CB Richard Ellis Inc. Complicating that supply forecast, however, is a growing supply of homes being rented while owners try to sell them.

• El Dorado, Placer, Sacramento and Yolo counties continue their rapid growth, adding at last count more than 32,000 people and 22,000 jobs yearly.

• More owners are now missing mortgage payments, a phenomenon expected to push more owners into foreclosure sales and back to renting. In recent years up to three-fourths of area buyers have used adjustable rate mortgages, and many struggle now with rising payments tied to interest rate increases.

Area landlords view these as signs the rental market is shifting their way after almost three years offering a month's free rent and other gimmicks to attract or keep tenants.

"We're seeing it change," said Dave Tanforan, who runs 1,270 apartments as regional property manager for G.W. Williams Co. "We're seeing those concessions come way down and the occupancy trends will most likely follow."

It's a favorite new conversation of landlords and managers, said Janet Regan, president of the Sacramento chapter of the National Association of Residential Property Managers.

"That's one of the biggest topics every month," she said. "The market is just starting to change. We're starting to see that we can get more for our homes as tenants move out."

But it hasn't changed so much that landlords can increase rent on existing tenants, said Regan, a broker with Horizon Properties in Citrus Heights.

The most recent analysis by Marin County-based industry consultant RealFacts shows about 7.3 percent of apartments in El Dorado, Placer, Sacramento and Yolo counties are empty. Some of the highest vacancies are in newer units in Rocklin and Elk Grove. Collectively, they help keep rent increases well below those in other U.S. metropolitan areas.

Nationally, cities such as Fort Lauderdale and West Palm Beach saw apartment rents rise by more than 10 percent during the year that ended March 31, according to an analysis by Texas-based YieldStar.

The Sacramento area's average rent climbed 3.7 percent, YieldStar reported, compared to more than 6 percent in Los Angeles and Oakland and 9 percent in San Jose and Phoenix. Southern California rents are expected to climb another 5 percent to 7 percent this year amid a vacancy rate of just 3 percent, according to a recent Casden Real Estate Economics Forecast compiled by the University of Southern California.

The Bay Area, too, has seen sizable hikes as vacancies fall below 5 percent, according to RealFacts.

Property managers say the Sacramento region usually trails the Bay Area by six to nine months. YieldStar's Willett said Sacramento will follow the nation as well, reacting "pretty quickly" to a supply squeeze with so little construction in the pipeline.

"We think as we move ahead we'll see Sacramento behave more like the other parts of the country," Willett said.

Region's rental market stagnant for a third year

Once again, it's still a renter's market. But just how long that continues is now open for debate.

For the third year in a row, rents in El Dorado, Placer, Sacramento and Yolo counties have remained largely unchanged, rising in the past 12 months just $13 to an average of $929, a new landlord survey shows. From the first quarter of 2004 to the same period of 2006, average capital-area rents have increased only 3.1 percent, according to the survey.

What's good news, though, for the 35 percent of the region's population that rents is hard on investors who normally bank on increases of 5 percent to 6 percent a year.

"It's kind of flat. It's kind of anemic," said Chris Bates, spokesman for Novato-based RealFacts, which analyzes rental markets for the apartment industry.

The Sacramento area's slim rise in rents contrasts with those in other regions around the state and in the West. Average rents in Riverside and San Bernardino counties rose 7.3 percent in the past year to lead the state. Rents in Los Angeles, Phoenix and Las Vegas jumped at least 6 percent.

The RealFacts analysis of apartment communities in the four-county Sacramento region shows first-quarter 2006 rents edged up $3 from the fourth quarter of 2005. The average occupancy rate, too, largely was unchanged at 92.7 percent, compared to 92.8 percent at the end of last year.

Typically, apartment owners prefer an occupancy rate of 95 percent to 96 percent. In early 2001, area landlords were clearly in the driver's seat with 97.7 percent occupancy rates, according to RealFacts.

The Marin County firm's first-quarter 2006 figures show that while rents increased slightly in Sacramento, Davis and Roseville in the past year, they fell almost 5 percent at nine apartment communities surveyed in Elk Grove and five in West Sacramento. That typically indicates more supply than demand, Bates said.

Rents also fell slightly across the past year at 18 complexes surveyed in Rocklin.

But the sustained favorable cycle may be winding down for renters accustomed to deals and move-in incentives such as a month's free rent.

Marc Ross, an associate with CB Richard Ellis' local investment properties division, described the past six months as "the last little hint of an oversupply scenario." The region added 4,000 apartments in 2004, he said.

Ross predicts the area's strong job growth and long slowdown in apartment construction will spur more increases in occupancy and rental rates during the next 12 to 18 months.

"We're trending slowly back to equilibrium," he said.

The RealFacts survey showed that though Sacramento-area rents are stable, they're still higher than in many similar-sized metro areas across the West, including Seattle, Portland, Denver, Phoenix and Las Vegas.

The Los Angeles area is still California's most expensive for renters, with average rents at $1,484, according to the survey.

About the writer: The Bee's Jim Wasserman can be reached at (916) 321-1102 or jwasserman@sacbee.com

Fevered growth cools in Roseville, Elk Grove

Bill to let landlords reject sex offenders

Owners fear liability from other tenants.

Apartment owners call AB2603 their newest strategy to maneuver between state laws that bar apartment owners from discriminating when renting and tenants who discover registered sex offenders living next door. The California Apartment Association, which sponsored the bill, says landlords are increasingly fearful of legal scenarios that stop them from screening or evicting sex offenders who appear in an online Megan's Law database, but make them liable for tenants who commit crimes.

"It's a legitimate business decision to keep sexual predators out of apartment communities," said Thomas Bannon, CAA chief executive officer. "To protect children is a good business decision."

The bill, authored by Assemblywoman Nicole Parra, D-Hanford, is scheduled for a 9 a.m. hearing in the Assembly Judiciary Committee.

Opponents say the measure is unnecessary and amounts to lifelong denial of housing for sex offenders. Under Megan's Law, offenders must register their addresses, which are posted online for the public.

So far, there are no reports of registered sex offenders molesting nearby tenants, says the CAA, whose members own or manage 759,000 apartments statewide. But Bannon said fears have led some apartment owners to pay registered offenders to leave their complexes.

"We're in a situation where if we find out somebody is a Megan's Law violator we can't refuse to rent to them or it's a $25,000 fine," said Mike Force, owner of Sacramento-based Westcal Management and a CAA board member.

In January, landlords pushed a bill allowing them to simply reject applicants and evict tenants who show up in the online Megan's Law database. But it died after arguments that it was discriminatory for life.

The new bill says registered sex offenders will no longer be considered part of any protected class such as race, religion or sexual orientation when applying for an apartment or fighting an eviction. That frees landlords to deny apartments or evict sex offenders without running afoul of fair-housing discrimination claims.

But opponents, including the American Civil Liberties Union, the Western Center on Law and Poverty and California Attorneys for Criminal Justice, argue the law could worsen the situation. In letters to lawmakers, they argued the bill could drive more offenders toward homelessness and low-income rentals, prod them not to register and make it even harder to track them.

The California Association of Realtors says the bill could expose landlords to more, not less, liability. Requiring landlords to determine whether every applicant is a registered sex offender invites lawsuits when the qualification process fails, it argues.

The CAR also called the bill unnecessary, even premature, until Attorney General Bill Lockyer issues an opinion on whether landlords are actually liable for denying apartments to sex offenders.

Rental vacancy rate up in area

Many landlords continued to struggle to fill apartments in December as the capital region's average vacancy rate rose to 7.8 percent.

The average apartment rent has risen 1.7 percent, or $15, over the last year to $913 in December, the industry research firm RealFacts reported Wednesday. The average reflects rents landlords charged for vacant units of all sizes in 352 middle-to high-priced complexes.

Today's vacancy rate - more than double that reported by RealFacts four years ago - stems from a lackluster local job market, the construction of thousands of new high-end apartment units and low mortgage rates that have turned many tenants into home buyers. Some analysts say the rental market could begin to tighten over the next year if, as widely predicted, Sacramento's job market heats up and higher home prices and mortgage rates make it more difficult for tenants to buy.

"We're at the softest part of the cycle," said Marc Ross, an apartment specialist with the CB Richard Ellis brokerage in Sacramento. "Right now we're in a very strong tenant market, and I think that will change over the next 12 to 18 months."

When today's rents are adjusted for the incentives landlords offer, such as two months' free rent for tenants who sign a one-year lease, rents have actually fallen slightly over the past two years, experts note.

Some landlords also are offering an additional incentive to fill units: Potential tenants who sign a lease within 24 hours of viewing a vacant unit get an extra $200 to $1,000 credit toward their rent. Those tenants are getting three months' free rent in exchange for signing an annual lease, Ross said.

RealFacts' measure of the average rent has been rising by a modest amount each quarter over the past two years, but that might be the result of RealFacts' regularly adding hundreds of new apartment units to its survey.

"It's a bit misleading because, in truth, rents have gone down consistently over the last year to 18 months," Ross said.

Last year about 4,000 apartment units - mostly high-end - were built in the capital region, while this year the number built will likely drop to about 2,700, Ross estimated. He based that number on his own research.

Aaron J. Frederick, an apartment specialist with competitor Marcus and Millichap, said his discussions with developers and planning officials indicate 6,400 apartment units could be built this year.

Apartment builders sometimes scrap or delay plans based on market conditions. Over the past year a growing number have converted their projects to for-sale condos, reflecting the glut of expensive new apartments here and the undersupply of relatively affordable condos for sale.

The weakness in the Sacramento rental market has trickled down to low-priced rental units not surveyed by RealFacts, though vacancies at lower-end apartments are lower and rents more stable.

For example, the average vacancy rate for 986 of the Sacramento area's least expensive apartment complexes was 4.8 percent last month, reports John Foley, director of Self Help Housing, a Sacramento nonprofit that helps low-income people find rentals.

Rents for units of various sizes were about the same as a year ago.

Still, many poor tenants struggle to find something they can afford if they lose a rental home where they had been paying a below-market rent.

"I'm getting more and more people who are shocked and dismayed they can't rent anything, yet I don't think the market is quite as bad as it was a year ago," Foley said.

Also making it rough on lower-income tenants, he said, are landlords unwilling to accept people with blemished credit or a past eviction. Others can't surmount landlords' minimum-income hurdle. Foley finds that, on average, landlords at low-end complexes require tenants to earn 2.7 times the rent to qualify.

About the writer: The Bee's Andrew LePage can be reached at (916) 321-1065 or alepage@sacbee.com.

Growing pains in Valley

Central Valley's population boom hasn't translated into an economic boom. A study to be released today by the Great Valley Center, a Modesto think tank, gives further weight to what many economists have been saying for years: Central Valley growth doesn't equal prosperity.

While the Central Valley's population is growing at a faster pace than the rest of California's, the 19-county region badly trails much of the state in most socioeconomic indicators. The Valley's unemployment rates are higher and its per capita incomes are lower, according to the study. The study is based on a variety of economic surveys conducted in recent years.

Meanwhile, the population explosion has actually hurt the one indicator in which the Valley shined: its housing affordability. Although housing in the Valley is still more affordable than coastal California, the gap is narrowing. "The population boom is not solving things economically for much of the Valley," said Don Schwartz, the study's manager.

Immigration, high birth rates and the drift of commuters from the Bay Area and high-cost coastal areas are fueling the Valley's population explosion. Its population is expected to increase 24 percent between 2000 and 2010 vs. 15 percent for all of California, the report said.

But the Valley isn't creating jobs quickly enough to keep pace, the report said. Although unemployment rates have fallen, they're still more than 4 percentage points higher than the rest of the state.

Of the 10 U.S. metro areas with the worst unemployment in 2003, six were in the Valley.

And many of the jobs being created are in low-wage service industries like retailing, Schwartz said, while low-wage agriculture remains the region's bread and butter.

"We're still largely agriculturally based," Schwartz said. "It tends to be on the low-wage side. We haven't diversified in ways that are as economically beneficial as we need. That's why we are still the way we are."

The Great Valley Center, an 8-year-old think tank founded by ex-Modesto Mayor Carol Whiteside, is facing its own economic hard times. It recently cut its annual budget in half, to $3 million.

Housing affordability in the Valley has dropped as prices have soared. In 1999, some 54 percent of the Valley's households could afford a median-priced house vs. 37 percent statewide. In 2004 the Valley's affordability index fell to 30 percent. The state's fell to 19 percent.

In addition, apartments are increasingly out of reach for Valley residents. The study said nearly 50 percent of Valley residents can't afford to rent a median-priced, two-bedroom apartment.

In terms of per capita income, the Valley is actually falling further behind the rest of California. The state's per capita income jumped 25 percent from 1997 to 2002, while the Valley's rose only 19 percent.

If the Valley were a state, it would rank 48th in the nation in per capita income, ahead of West Virginia, Arkansas and Mississippi, according to the study.

Most experts believe the Valley's poorly educated work force has been a crucial obstacle to economic diversification. The new University of California campus under construction at Merced will likely improve matters but won't solve the Valley's socioeconomic problems by itself, Schwartz said.

"Certainly the university will help, but we don't see it as a panacea for the region. There needs to be more than hoping a single university will change the fortunes of an entire region," he said.

The study showed that the Sacramento region, encompassing El Dorado, Placer and Sacramento counties, remains the economic oasis of the Valley, with lower unemployment and higher incomes.

"Economically, it's distinctly different in many ways from the rest of the Valley," Schwartz said. But Sacramento isn't "as strong economically in many ways as other parts of California," trailing the Bay Area and Los Angeles in measures such as income.

About the writer: The Bee's Dale Kasler can be reached at (916) 321-1066 or dkasler@sacbee.com.

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