Nice Diggs......

Here's a short article from 2006 about 3 expensive homes (2 of them owned by former pro athletes) that were selling their homes back in October of 2006 at the height of the housing bubble.

Wayne Gretzky (aka "The Great One") dropped the price of his 12,500 sq foot pad outside of LA, from $25 million down to $18.5 million (and Jim Cramer's buddy Lenny Dykstra bought it....before it was foreclosed on over the past week).

But what really caught my eye was Don Meredith's sale of his pad in Santa Fe (BEAUTIFUL city by the way). Here is key paragraph from that sale:

The three-acre property has a four-bedroom main house of just over 5,000 square feet, a two-bedroom apartment above the garage and a detached office that could be used as a one-bedroom guest house. There's also a greenhouse, tennis court and three roof decks. Ms. Meredith said she and her husband bought the property as a small adobe house 26 years ago, renovated and expanded it and have used it as their primary residence ever since. She said they're downsizing but will stay in Santa Fe.

We are in changing times. We have come out of the "age of opulence".....that was driven by many things: (1) baby boomers, (2) credit bubble, (3) housing bubble, (4) bigger is better mantra, (5) a sring of "good economic times" that were fueled by the above 4 items.

But now....on the other side of that mountain.....we are facing things that work in just the opposite direction: (1) ageing baby boomers that are downsizing, (2) baby boomers that are getting rid of their 2nd or 3rd homes, (3) de-leveraging....instead of growing credit, (4) the age of "saving the planet".....instead of the age of opulence.

So the high end of real estate.......I believe.....will be getting roundly trashed over the coming years. If you think the sub-prime market was a disaster........just wait for another year or two of sinking home prices at the high end of the market. It's going to be brutal.