According to DQNews.com, many cities, including Santa Barbara, are beginning to post increases in home sales and slower declines in the median price of home sales.  In fact, October experienced the smallest decline in median home prices since 2007, primarily due to a smaller inventory of foreclosed and distressed properties on the market.  The median price for a home in Southern California was $280,000, up 1.8 percent from the previous month but down 6.7 percent from the previous year.  Some regions near Santa Barbara are even beginning to experience year over year gains in the overall median home price.  In October of 2009, about 22,000 new and resale houses and condos were sold in Southern California, which was a 2.8 percent increase from the previous month and also a 2.8 percent increase form the previous year.  October also marked the 16^th consecutive month ending in a year over year gain in home sales.  Experts also believe that the federal tax credit for first time home buyers has also been a major factor in the increase in home sales, as well as affordable mortgage rates and home prices.

The Pacific Coast Business Times also reports that real estate experts forecast that the Santa Barbara real estate market will rebound in the coming months as signs show that the market has already hit bottom.  Declining foreclosure rates will play a major role in the improvement of median home prices.  However, experts still believe that the commercial real estate market has a longer way to come, given that the market is still struggling with a 13.3 percent vacancy rate and virtually nonexistent construction activity.

The “Dot-com” era, also known as the “dot-com bubble” was an economic bubble that lasted from 1998 to 2001 and was a period in which many internet based companies were established.  Born largely out of the numerous technology companies such as Google and Yahoo based in Silicon Valley in California, the “dot-com” era gained momentum when many companies found that establishing internet based businesses or simply adding an “e-” prefix or “.com” suffix to the company name often caused company stock prices to shoot up.

Many of the internet based companies founded during this era are known as “dot-com” companies.  These companies experiences record-setting rises in stock values, causing many companies to move faster and with less caution than usual.  The main goal of these “dot-com” companies was to establish as large a network as possible in order to attract as large a customer base as possible.  For this reason, many companies such as Google and Amazon did not see any profit in their first years.  Many companies worked upon the wisdom of the day: “Get large or get lost.”  However, by 2000, the economy was beginning to lose speed, right after the Federal Reserve had increased interest rates six times during the period of 1999 to early 2000.  The dot-com bubble burst on March 10, 2000, when the NASDAQ fell due to what some think was caused by the massive, multi-billion dollar sell orders for major high-tech companies’ stocks such as Cisco, IBM, and Dell, which happened by chance to be processed in the same day.  By the end of the dot-com era, many online companies ran out of capital and were acquired or liquidated.  However, a few large dot-com companies such as Amazon and eBay survived the turmoil, while others such as Google emerged as mega-firms dominating the online industry.