REAL ESTATE

Lyon on Housing: If developer William Lyon is correct--and he didn’t get where he is by being wrong a lot--it will be a while yet before the real estate and property development business gets back to normal.

In a rare interview last summer, Lyon offered several predictions that are worth getting on the record as the new year begins:

He said that while the residential market in Orange County was hurting badly, the pain wouldn’t last. And for homeowners who worry about reports of plunging resale values, he counseled patience.

There will be “another big bulge of runaway prices” in the local resale market, Lyon said, because political and economic constraints are keeping the supply of housing well below demand.

The sales slowdown, he said, was caused in part “by the public’s resistance to home prices” and also because people who must sell a home to reclaim their equity and come up with down payments for a new residence overprice the homes they want to sell.

Lyon, whose William Lyon Co. is the nation’s largest home builder in terms of annual sales revenue, also said be believes that Orange County will continue to grow at a disproportionately high rate compared to the rest of the state “because it is a wonderful place and businesses will keep coming here.”

And a final thought:

“Something that gets missed by the public and the politicians is that there is no such thing as a low-cost home. There are low-income people, but the cost of materials and land and labor can’t come down. . . . We talk about a solution to low-cost housing, but there really is no such thing . . . but we must keep trying.”