Say hello to rising housing inventory in Southern California: Year-over-year inventory is up 26 percent in Los Angeles and 30 percent in Ventura.

Dr. Housing Bubble reports:

Have you heard the good news? Today is a great time to buy in SoCal! So says the multiple flyers, e-mails, and recent phone messages I have been receiving from local real estate workers. What I find interesting is that in 2013, many were too busy to even pick up their phone let alone put out flyers as if they were searching for a lost and lonely pug. The market is slowing down dramatically because investors are pulling back. Real estate markets turn at a viciously slow pace for our instant gratification society that is hooked on news-o-tainment with multiple tickers and more split screens than NFL Sunday. It is all about entertainment and ironically this showboating has permeated into “staging” homes and putting lipstick on pigs to get house horny folks to commit to massive amounts of debt slavery. Yet budgets are being smashed as reality is now setting in and people are slowly gaining their sanity. You mean that piece of crap is $600,000? Indeed! And in some hot markets you get a juicy middle finger when it comes to upgrades and you will get a nice plate of deferred maintenance with your locked in bid. While the mania slows down, you now hear about steps to lower credit standards and going “non-prime” to goose the market again. Of course this is a great tell on an inflection point. In the mean time we are seeing inventory creeping back up and sales declining.

The bubble isn't too far away in California real estate.