The Beverly Hills real estate market is considerably more exclusive and expensive than the rest of Los Angeles, although they are quite closely related. An article published in the Orange County Register on October 12, 2009, provided a unique perspective on the situation facing Beverly Hills. The article, written by Marilyn Kalfun, noted that “So what’s the celebrity Realtor’s take on Orange County’s priciest beach areas compared to his Beverly Hills and Malibu stomping grounds? As for what he sees for the Orange County and Southern California real estate market in general, and he didn’t sugar coat it: ‘I hate to sound negative, I want the real estate market to get back to normal ASAP, but I really feel that we haven’t hit the bottom yet and we’re going to get a second wave (of foreclosure listings) in the coming months…Right now we’re consistent with 2003 prices. We could be going back down to 2001, 2002.”

An article in the Los Angeles Daily News found some bad news for real estate in Beverly Hills. According to an October 20, 2009 article, “The number of Los Angeles County homes slipping toward foreclosure increased by 28 percent in the third quarter of the year, compared to the same period in 2008, a real estate information service reported Tuesday. Lenders sent default notices to 21,850 homeowners in Los Angeles County in the third quarter, up from the previous year’s third-quarter total of 17,703, according to La Jolla-based MDA DataQuick. In Orange County, default notices were sent to 7,436 homeowners, up 30.6 percent from the 2008 third-quarter total of 5,692.”

There was an even broader perspective for Beverly Hills homes for sale provided by an October 16, 2009 article in the Associated Press. This piece, written by Jacob Adelman, found that “The number of homes sold in California last month ticked up last month from August, as low mortgage rates and eagerness to cash in on a soon-to-expire tax credit fueled activity in a normally sluggish time for home buying, a tracking firm said Thursday…Foreclosures accounted for about 42 percent of all sales, the lowest rate in more than a year.”