A report from the Press Democrat in California. "Sonoma County’s housing market started the year the way it finished 2018 — in decline as buyers remain content to sit tight as sellers reduce home prices. In February, 227 single-family homes were sold in the county, a 15 percent drop from the same month a year ago, according to The Press Democrat’s monthly housing report compiled by agent Rick Laws. The median home sales price last month fell to $620,000, down 10 percent from February 2018."

"Gail Johnson, a Realtor with Century 21 who specializes in properties in Santa Rosa’s Oakmont neighborhood, said home prices in her market have come down to where they were just before the fires. 'They went up as much as 20 percent,' she said."

"Johnson said houses now listed for $900,000 to $1 million are 'sitting,' with some sellers 'still thinking the houses are worth what they were right after the fires.'"

From Curbed San Francisco. "Berkeley’s Spring Mansion, located at 1960 San Antonio, is one of the Bay Area’s busiest landmarks and rarely out of the spotlight for long. This seven-bed, six-and-a-half-bath mansion the Berkeley Hills has chopped its price again. When it first listed in 2016, the asking was $7.5 million; now, it’s a touch over $5.99 million, after previously dropping to $6.99 million last year."

From Curbed Los Angeles. "It’s not just home values leveling off in Los Angeles. Rental prices in LA County are rising at the slowest rate in five years, according to commercial real estate tracker CoStar."

"CoStar analyst Stephen Basham suggests that rental prices in Los Angeles may simply be approaching their limit. 'Rents grew so quickly earlier in the cycle that they’ve been pushed about as high as the market can bear,' he says. 'Going forward, the rate of rent growth may be limited by overall income growth.'"

From CAL Matters. "Gov. Gavin Newsom’s first budget proposal, unveiled two months ago, took a surprisingly conservative approach, given his promises of high-dollar spending during his campaign for the governorship. In the weeks since Newsom released his budget, we’ve seen several indications that California’s economy, which has been booming for the better part of a decade and generating many billions of extra dollars in state revenue, may, in fact, be slowing."

"There’s been a marked slowdown in the state’s once-red-hot housing market, for example, and while unemployment remains at historic low levels—just 4.2 percent in January—job creation also seems to be slowing, in part because employers are having difficulty finding enough qualified workers."

"Personal income taxes provided 53 percent of the state’s general-fund revenue. But as Newsom succeeds Brown, income taxes account for 71 percent. And half of them are paid by just 1 percent of the state’s taxpayers, thanks not only to overall economic gains but also to higher tax rates on the wealthy, which Brown championed."

"Despite his advocacy for those tax increases, Brown repeatedly warned that relying so much on high-income taxpayers creates higher levels of revenue volatility that bite hard during economic downturns. During the Great Recession, California saw its general-fund revenue drop by about 20 percent, with most of that decline stemming from reductions in taxable income among the state’s wealthiest residents. Is California beginning to feel that bite again?"

The Merced Sun-Star. "After a streak of more than eight years of year-over-year improvement in the monthly unemployment rate, Merced County’s jobless rate ticked up in January, compared to a year ago. The state Employment Development Department estimated the county’s unemployment rate at 10.3 percent."

"That’s not only up from the December rate of 8.2 percent, but it’s also higher than the 10.0 percent reported for January 2018. Prior to that, the monthly unemployment rate in the county had fallen from the year-prior figure for 99 consecutive months, since September 2010."

"Robert Dye, chief economist for Comerica Bank, characterized preliminary estimates of national job growth in February as 'the clunk heard around the world,' as the U.S. added only about 20,000 jobs during the month, compared to expectations of about 200,000 new jobs nationwide."

"Michael Bernick, former director of the state EDD, noted that California only gained 3,000 non-farm jobs in January compared to December, 'well below the monthly average of around 24,000 jobs we’ve seen in the past few years.' 'It’s too early to say whether this represents the employment slowdown or even downturn that has been talked about for some time,' Bernick added. 'This is the second longest employment expansion in the post-World War II period in California.'"