Suddenly last week, evidence started popping up that the housing crisis has hit bottom, or soon will.

But first, an important caveat: Hitting bottom does not mean an immediate bounceback. It just means the drop has stopped.

Another important caveat: Evidence today does not mean there will be a certain outcome later. After all, there was evidence last year that Andruw Jones would make a nice addition to the Dodgers this year.

Now that that’s done, let’s take a look at the evidence. And the easiest bit of evidence is in the article that appears on page one of this issue.

That story, and the accompanying charts, show that the number of home sales in Los Angeles County hit a bottom in February. They went up in March and went up again, by 15 percent, last month.

Now, you could blow off that increase as meaningless because it merely reflects a seasonal sales pattern. Home sales always are slow early in the year and pick up in the spring. But the flaw in that reasoning is that in a crisis, seasons become meaningless. In a true panic, no one wants to buy, regardless of whether it is spring. The fact that Los Angeles has seen consecutive months of sales increases is interesting. It suggests a bottom may have been hit in February. For that matter, let’s say for the sake of argument that the increase is entirely due to normal seasonal increases. The fact that we’re seeing a seasonal increase is some evidence of a return to a normal, non-crisis, pattern.

As if you need it, here’s another caveat: An increase in the number of homes sold does not imply that home prices are going up soon. Indeed, prices in Los Angeles are going down now. But that is normal. Home sales usually go up or down first and prices follow eventually. (Home prices continued escalating most of last year locally even as sales were swooning.)

Beyond that, some influential types have started opining that, in their view, housing has hit bottom.

CNBC’s Jim Cramer said last week that he believed we’re now seeing the turn in housing. He said the big problem has been that sellers refused to drop their prices much, and buyers have been waiting them out. But lately sellers have been forced to whack prices, especially since so many homebuilders have drastically chopped prices of new homes.

“It’s just like everything else with supply and demand,” Cramer said. “They cut prices 30 percent, and suddenly they’re blowing out the doors.”

Another influential type was Cyril Moulle-Berteaux, a hedge fund manager whose op-ed in the Wall Street Journal last Monday was headlined: “The Housing Crisis is Over.”

One of his arguments is that home prices not only have fallen but mortgage rates are down, making average mortgage payments today equal 19 percent of monthly income for the average buyer the same as it was during much of the 1990s. What’s more, he said, inventories of unsold homes are dropping.

All this is important, of course, to Los Angeles. Because of the high home prices here, any change in the housing market has an outsized effect on the local economy. So any evidence that the housing market may be hitting a bottom is of interest.

But, alas, there’s another caveat: The evidence could be wrong. Maybe we haven’t hit bottom at all. Maybe we’re just pausing before another big drop.

For that matter, since Cramer believes housing has hit bottom and since Cramer is usually wrong, this whole hitting-bottom premise could be suspect.

Charles Crumpley is editor of the Business Journal. He can be reached at

[email protected]

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