Happy New Year! And prediction for 2009.

I hope 2009 is a great year for everybody! Here's my residential real estate prediction for the Los Angeles area: Move-up buyers (people who would like to move to larger homes) are going to be hurt by the current real estate climate. First, they will likely need to sell their existing homes in order to qualify for a loan for a new property. That's going to be hard, unless they've owned their current homes for over four years as their equity has diminished and they may even be upside-down. Second, there isn't a great supply of homes to move up to -- the existing supply of homes for sale are condos and other first-time buyer-type homes.