Bubblicious

We already knew that there's a real estate bubble in California. Yesterday's LA Times story confirmed it with an impressive benchmark:

In California, the median sales price for existing homes broke through the $500,000 level for the first time ....

That's for the whole state. In places, it's gotten to a point Doctor Evil would approve of: last year, the median home price in the Santa Barbara area surpassed one MILLION DOLLARS.

California's home prices rose a bubbly 12.5% since April 2004. What's scary, though, is that prices in California went up slower than in the rest of the country. For the nation as a whole, house prices went up 15.1% over the past year.

You needn't worry, though. Alan Greenspan said there are only "local bubbles."