Tracking trouble in Santa Monica

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First a post, then a brief bloviation.

Post

: A new blog on our radar screen this week, Santa Monica Distress Monitor, gets down and dirty with details of defaults, distress and foreclosure in Santa Monica.

Example: A 2-bedroom, 1-bath condo in 90403 that sold with 100% financing in June 2006 for $681,000 just went through foreclosure and was sold for the surprisingly low price of ... (wait for it) ... (wait for it) ... $560,000.

Wow -- that’s an 18% decline in a little over a year ... in Santa Monica.

Now, bloviation: We really enjoy the proliferation of these smart, tightly focused neighborhood blogs. It’s funny, but when you read newspaper or magazine coverage of the explosion of news and information on the Web, the coverage is often tinged with worry, or anxiety, or troubling questions -- a vague sense that the orderliness or integrity of the flow of information is somehow at risk. But when we watch the explosion of information in just our tiny little world of Los Angeles real estate, it’s absolutely mind-blowing how much information, thought, news, opinion and analysis is becoming available. It’s a great time to be a consumer of information. We think it rocks. As Johnny Miller said on NBC during the golf tournament last weekend, ‘If you don’t like this, folks, turn on tennis.’

Photo Credit: ‘Pier at Santa Monica,’ by ‘Empriss,’ on LATimes.com’s Your Scene