Scary Stat of the Day

North County Times via CR:

At the peak of the market, around 2006, 45 percent of Temecula Valley office tenants were escrow, real estate, mortgage and title companies, said Mark Esbensen, a Grubb & Ellis managing director who helped prepare the report. Much of that space is now being vacated.

We don't have systematic data on this, but anecdotal evidence suggests that suburbs are more tied up with mortgage (residential and commercial) than urban area. If this is indeed true, then the current housing market decline will disproportionally and negatively impact suburbs.

That suburbs will shrink in the face of housing price decline and petroleum uncertainty is a consensus forecast, whether or not something like a Temecula will wither on a vine- a modern day ghost town- remains to be seen.