I would argue that the Southern California economy is probably the most diversified in the nation. There is a nice mix of sectors here: raw materials, import/export, manufacturing, entertainment, healthcare, financials, tourism, government, transportation, and technology. As was mentioned before, pretty much every big car company has a headquarters here. There are also pockets of very high tech companies here, all the defense contractors up in El Segundo for example, or the Jet Propulsion Laboratory of NASA, are just a couple of examples of these. Throw in San Diego and you are now adding pockets of growth sectors like biotech.
It really depends on what your definition of "Southern California" is. To alot of outsiders, "LA" also includes Orange County. Having lived and worked in both counties at the same time, I'd say Orange County is intertwined with the LA economy pretty tightly. Other parts of South Orange County and West Riverside, you see people commuting into San Diego. My definition of "LA" includes about 5 different counties, since over the course of my career, I've had people commuting to jobs from all of these places.
Regarding housing, I've read several mainstream articles mentioning Irvine as the epicenter of the subprime meltdown. So this is similar to the .com meltdown in Silicon Valley in 2000-2001. I remember visiting San Jose and Milipitas back then. The atmosphere was really gloomy. Gigantic corporate offices (yes even Cisco's) had these large newly finished buildings, with these huge unfinished lawns out front. You couldn't even call them "lawns," they were just big piles of unplanted dirt.
Lots of housing tracts here in Orange County remind me of my visit back then. All of these vacant developments, many of them unfinished skeletons or holes in the ground as if they were stopped and frozen in time.
As someone in the technology field, there are 3 cities where there is a large supply of technology jobs: San Francisco, Dallas, or Southern California. Although San Francisco is considered the "mecca" of tech, it is also more prone to the boom and bust cycles in the technology sector, since the San Francisco economy is not as diversified as the Southern California economy. Typically, the San Francisco tech job is a job that is supporting the technology sector. Whereas the Southern California tech job is in support of any number of sectors.
This year has been rough for everybody. The housing price drops along with the interest rate drops, are great for those of us interested in getting houses, even though, I still think OC home prices are way overvalued. But now we're all worried about job cuts, so making a big move into buying property doesn't make much sense. 2009 is going to suck really bad, but if we can get through it, things should come out okay. The birth of the next "boom" is already underway, we just have no idea what it is, and when it will finally surface.
I'd always drove around since I moved down here a few years ago, seeing these inflated housing prices, and wondering how in the hell there were so many people affording these million dollar homes. Was this county full of CEOs? I wondered how that was possible? If the whole County was full of CEOs, who was doing all the service work? It wasn't until the details of the creative financing came to light that it all started to make sense. So good to see places like Irvine Housing Blog educating the public about the whole sham of loose lending.
It really depends on what your definition of "Southern California" is. To alot of outsiders, "LA" also includes Orange County. Having lived and worked in both counties at the same time, I'd say Orange County is intertwined with the LA economy pretty tightly. Other parts of South Orange County and West Riverside, you see people commuting into San Diego. My definition of "LA" includes about 5 different counties, since over the course of my career, I've had people commuting to jobs from all of these places.
Regarding housing, I've read several mainstream articles mentioning Irvine as the epicenter of the subprime meltdown. So this is similar to the .com meltdown in Silicon Valley in 2000-2001. I remember visiting San Jose and Milipitas back then. The atmosphere was really gloomy. Gigantic corporate offices (yes even Cisco's) had these large newly finished buildings, with these huge unfinished lawns out front. You couldn't even call them "lawns," they were just big piles of unplanted dirt.
Lots of housing tracts here in Orange County remind me of my visit back then. All of these vacant developments, many of them unfinished skeletons or holes in the ground as if they were stopped and frozen in time.
As someone in the technology field, there are 3 cities where there is a large supply of technology jobs: San Francisco, Dallas, or Southern California. Although San Francisco is considered the "mecca" of tech, it is also more prone to the boom and bust cycles in the technology sector, since the San Francisco economy is not as diversified as the Southern California economy. Typically, the San Francisco tech job is a job that is supporting the technology sector. Whereas the Southern California tech job is in support of any number of sectors.
This year has been rough for everybody. The housing price drops along with the interest rate drops, are great for those of us interested in getting houses, even though, I still think OC home prices are way overvalued. But now we're all worried about job cuts, so making a big move into buying property doesn't make much sense. 2009 is going to suck really bad, but if we can get through it, things should come out okay. The birth of the next "boom" is already underway, we just have no idea what it is, and when it will finally surface.
I'd always drove around since I moved down here a few years ago, seeing these inflated housing prices, and wondering how in the hell there were so many people affording these million dollar homes. Was this county full of CEOs? I wondered how that was possible? If the whole County was full of CEOs, who was doing all the service work? It wasn't until the details of the creative financing came to light that it all started to make sense. So good to see places like Irvine Housing Blog educating the public about the whole sham of loose lending.
