Earthquakes & Housing Prices

I was talking with one of the Bay Area earthquake geologists this AM and took the opportunity to ask her the question that came up some weeks ago about whether or not housing prices in Calif. dropped after the Loma Prieta and Northridge earthquakes. Here's her answer:
---
My site doesn't have that info - but I know what happened. Basically, in a disaster, housing units are damaged and destroyed so there is less supply which tends to drive up prices. However, people also can leave, which tends to drive prices down. The Northridge earthquake hit at a depression in the LA housing market due to job losses in the defense industry. The vacancy rate at the time was 10%. The quake caused 48,000 housing units to be uninhabitable, largely in apartments, right at the time when people were thinking about leaving the area to get jobs elsewhere. The quake was the last straw for many to leave, and people in apartments took advantage of a TEMPORARY drop in housing prices to grab up undamaged homes (leaving, in many cases, damaged apartments). Then lots of folks in damaged apartments moved to undamaged apartments. When I went down there about three weeks after! the quake, the "Northridge Moving and Storage" vans were everywhere. In Loma Prieta, there really wasn't any significant impact on housing prices (that is, the factors pushing prices up roughly balanced those driving prices down). The other big "winner" besides moving companies is contractors!

(no subject)

23rd post:

Refi done
The refi's in the mail. Yippee! That was the most painless refi, ever.
....
[5th sentence] ... Too many tricksy raccoons. They had a party in the water dish on the front porch last night, to my surprise. I thought it was off limits to them. ...

Early memory

I distinctly remember eating all the coins in one of those little church donation envelopes when I was little enough to still be sleeping in a crib. I was standing up holding onto the railing, the envelope was in arm's reach on top of a bookcase, and it seemed like the most normal exploratory thing to do. Can I open it? Yes! Can I pick these up? Yes! I wonder if I can put them in my mouth? Yes! Can I swallow them? Yes! Mission accomplished! That was cool! I also remember my mother coming into the room, finding it empty and asking my sisters, brother, father, where the coins were before turning to look at me. I remember the discussion about it, the calling of the doctor, the deciding to go ahead and go to church, and conveniently, nothing more.