Delores Conway, director of the Casden Forecast at the USC Lusk Center for Real Estate, said all economists look at similar data such as job growth and housing prices. "The real issue is what weight to give to each of these indicators." At the Lusk Center, she said, economists pay the most attention to employment growth, which she said in the Inland counties continues to be steady. Thornberg emphasized that his bearishness about the Inland Empire doesn't go very far. "I am talking about rough weather for the next couple years," he said. "This is a bend, not a trend." In a report handed to those attending the breakfast conference at the Riverside Convention Center, the two economists agreed the housing sector in the Inland Empire is "clearly in a recession." But both also were enthusiastic about the future of the region, which they wrote "is rapidly becoming the dominant center of activity in not only Southern California, but all of California. The work force is younger, the land cheaper and home prices a bargain" compared with the adjacent coastal counties.
June 10, 2007