San Diego bankruptcy attorneys and real estate professionals are seeing no slowdown in the default and foreclosure rate of multi-million dollar homes. San Diego based MDA Dataquick reported 2,689 foreclosures and 4,925 default notices in the million-dollar-plus homes last year.

Yes, even the multi-millionaires are feeling the real-estate crunch. Says an Oakland luxury realty specialist: "In the same way you don't see many new Porsches driving around anymore, we don't market homes as trophy properties anymore. We sell them as large homes, comfortable estates -- it's a repositioning in marketing. Bragging rights are not as popular today as they were in 2005."

This is just more evidence that while the economy is picking up, it is picking up due to the availability of the cheaper foreclosed homes, a huge plus in the newfound culture of frugality -- the culture of insolvency avoidance. Thus, it's essentially a bottom-up recovery and not a recovery from the top-down.

Southern California sales of million-dollar-plus homes declined 19.4 percent and statewide, such sales declined 23.8 percent.

These numbers are consistent with national bankruptcy statistics which claim that where it was the lower-income individuals coming in for chapter 7 or chapter 13 bankruptcy a few years ago, it is now the wealthier individuals and business owners who are finding themselves facing the prospect of insolvency.

The median price decline for million-dollar-plus homes was $420,000, a 35% decrease in price from last year.

LaJolla still ranks number one in the San Diego region for sales of million-dollar-plus homes last year, with 259 sales.