The median home price, $116,000, is down 68% from its peak in 2006. Three of five homeowners with a mortgage here owe more on their loans than their houses are worth, compared with about one in five nationally.
Socked by a sharp loss of property and sales tax revenue, Merced County and its cities have slashed budgets, workers and services. The grass is being mowed less often in city parks. A senior center is open fewer hours.
Families have adjusted, too. Forget dreams of making big bucks on California real estate. Many here now count the years guessing, really until theyll no longer owe more on their homes than theyre worth.
Were in survival mode, waiting for recovery, says Stephen Hammond, 42, pastor at Bethel Community Church in Los Banos, a Merced County town of 35,000 amid cotton and tomato fields.
More cuts are possible because of looming budget deficits, Merced government officials say. Dozens of other communities nationwide may face the same tough choices in the wake of huge drops in home values, which often lead to less property tax revenue. In Merced, the impacts have hit hard, and they hint at what may be to come for others.
For Merced County government, property taxes are the No. 1 source of general fund revenue, says Scott De Moss, deputy county executive officer. Property tax revenue has dropped 25% during the past three years. Almost 15% of the countys workforce has been slashed. Social and mental health service positions took the biggest hits, officials say.
In the city of Merced, sales tax revenue is down 24% and property tax collections, about 34%, from 2007 levels, city officials say. Thats forced cuts in the police and fire departments. Police might not show up anymore to take fender bender reports and firetrucks may no longer always roll on the same calls as ambulances, says Merced City Manager John Bramble. The citys 80,000 trees now get pruned once every three years, instead of every two. The senior center is open 28, not 40, hours a week. Asphalt patches, not new concrete, are being used to repair sidewalks.
People are used to a higher level of service, says Bill Spriggs, who serves as mayor for the city of 80,600. But this is the new normal.
In Los Banos, the grass is now cut in city parks every 15 days. It used to be cut weekly. Vacant houses dot nearly every neighborhood. New roads end in cul-de-sacs surrounded by vacant lots. A weather-beaten billboard announces a 35,000-square-foot retail center that is coming soon but never has.
This was, right here, all going to be industry, says Tommy Jones, Los Banos former mayor, as he points to a goat pasture.
Nationwide, local governments typically get more than half of their revenue from local sources, the largest of which is property taxes, says economics professor John Anderson at the University of Nebraska. Because property tax collections can lag behind market values by 18 months to several years, they continued to rise for US cities through 2009 despite housing price declines in most areas. But city property tax collections fell 2% last year as reduced assessments started to kick in, according to survey data collected by the National League of Cities. More drops are expected this year and next as the decline continues.
The Merced city and county governments have softened the blow to services by eating through millions in financial reserves. But budget deficits are still the norm. This summer, Merced city plans to ask residents to approve a half-cent sales tax increase to cover a $5.2 million budget shortfall.
If the new tax doesnt pass, Bramble says, The quality of city services will be severely changed.
Underwater, with few options
The double whammy of the recession and the real estate crash has forced changes in how consumers spend, plan for their futures and view their neighbors. Businesses also have suffered, because homeowners have less equity in their homes or none at all. Overlaying everything is a local economy in which one of five workers is jobless, in part because of the collapse of the areas once-fast-growing home construction industry.
The last good year was 2008, says Greg Parle, owner of the Branding Iron Restaurant in Merced. Business is off at least 20% since then, he says. Hes adding lower-priced items to the menu.
The regions ability to foster such small businesses will suffer because of so much lost home equity. Almost one-quarter of small-business owners borrow against their homes or use them as collateral to fuel businesses, according to a 2009 Gallup survey of small-business owners. Thatll likely be less now in Merced and other places with so many underwater homeowners. Start-ups will feel the greatest impact, says Mark Schweitzer, director of research for the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland.
Loreina Childress, 39, a county environmental health worker, has felt the impact of the new normal at home and work.
The previous work of 26 in her department is now done by 21. At home, a lot remains vacant, and there are more renters in her neighborhood than before the real estate bust.
Childress bought her Merced County home in 2006, when the market was still hot. She owes $241,000 on the 1,500-square-foot home that might sell for $140,000.
Her husband, Gary, 38, switched careers a year ago, from forklift driver to emergency medical technician. He cant find full-time work. Thats placed new stress on the familys finances, along with the reality of being so far underwater on the house.
Loreina now pours milk in her coffee, not cream. She eats TV dinners at her desk for lunch, rather than fresh sandwiches at a deli. She can recite, down to the penny, the cost of South Beach Diet bars at three retailers. Plans to landscape the yard have been scrapped.
Gary might have more luck pursuing work in other states. That would mean selling the house at a big loss or doing what the couple say they wont do: Give the house back to the bank and walk away.
We made an agreement, Loreina says. We cant go anywhere until we can break even on the house.
Los Banos Unified School District Superintendent Steve Tietjen, 55, is underwater on his home, too. He bought his Los Banos home in 2007. If a job change appears, Ill have a dilemma, he says. I never wouldve conceived that somebody whos a superintendent would have that dilemma.
Like Tietjen, many people here know someone who lost their house either because of a job loss or a decision not to stick it out. Some former homeowners now rent. Some bought other homes at distressed prices, then walked away from underwater ones.
John Betham, 58, and his wife, Sandra, 55, are staying put. They owe $375,000 on their Los Banos home. They estimate it would sell now for $150,000.
The Bethams both teach in Los Banos. They can make the house payments and will delay their retirements if needed. They love their house and feel an obligation to pay the debt. A lot of these people bailed. But we did everything right, and were stuck, John says. Its a bit of a bitter pill.
Not much relief in sight
Little relief is expected anytime soon here, despite signs of a strengthening US economy.
Nationwide, home prices are down 30% from their 2006 peak. Moodys Analytics economist Celia Chen says national home prices will regain that ground by 2021.
Some areas will take far longer. In 22 US metropolitan regions, most in California and Florida, home prices wont return to their 2006 peaks before 2030, Chen estimates. That includes such cities as Miami, Detroit, Phoenix, Las Vegas and Riverside, Calif.
Merced is so far off its peak that itll take many decades for home prices to return to their 2006 peaks, Chen says.
Like other central California communities, Merceds housing boom was fueled by San Francisco Bay Area commuters looking for cheaper housing. The opening of a University of California campus in Merced in 2005 attracted builders and investors who saw a big future for rentals.
In 2005, almost 3,500 single-family-home building permits were issued in Merced County, Moodys data show. That was up from an average of 1,053 a year in the 1990s. Merceds unemployment rate dropped below 10% in 2006 as home construction soared.
But Merceds fall was just as steep. Since 2006, the county has lost more than 2,500 construction jobs, state employment data indicate. In the past three years, just 415 single-family building permits have been issued countywide. Last year, one of 14 Merced homes received foreclosure filings vs. one of 45 nationwide, says researcher RealtyTrac.
Newcomers to Merced are winning in the hard-times economy. Home prices are so low that sales are made as fast as we can stick a (for sale) sign in the ground, says Loren Gonella, owner of Gonella Realty in Merced. In December, median prices were up 5% from a year ago, he adds.
He says home prices will recover. The UC campus is expanding, as is a relatively new hospital. Wal-Mart plans to open a distribution center here in the next few years, which would eventually employ up to 900. The San Francisco Bay Area has funneled home buyers to the Central Valley for decades. That will continue, he says.
The feared mass exodus from the county has not occurred. In Los Banos, student enrollment dipped in 2008 and 2009 but has returned to 2006 levels, Tietjen says. In many cases, multiple families inhabit homes that used to contain one, he says.
Ray Ortiz, 40, bought his Los Banos home in 2009 for $150,000. At the peak, it would have cost more than $400,000.
Ortiz commutes 90 minutes to his job in San Jose as a maintenance supervisor for a garbage company. He pays $50 more a month to own in Los Banos than he would to rent in San Jose.
Even if home prices drop more before they go up, Ortiz is confident he made a good buy.
I feel like I won the lottery, he says.
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