“This isn’t 2008!”

It’s a common refrain from real estate gurus when talking about the fragility of California’s housing market.

Well, housing and economic conditions today may not be exactly like 2008 – shorthand for the financial disaster that popped that decade’s real estate bubble, creating the Great Recession. Yet, that ugly housing era wasn’t the Golden State’s only real estate debacle.

Many people can’t – or won’t – recall how bad California’s housing market was in the 1990s, a real estate slump that had plenty in common with the current economy.

Well, this jaded, old journalist remembers when the California boom of the late 1980s ended with a thud — a painful start to a recessionary decade. Call it another reminder of California real estate’s risks.

There was a loss of lending

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