Hard landing underway as housing bubble bursts

Folks, if you or someone you know is still living in la-la-land, in denial that the housing correction is fully underway, please send them this article for starters (and then a link to the blog of course). The numbers are the numbers, but the stories from the street are equally interesting. The bubble has popped, and the correction is underway - nationwide. Period. Full stop.

Sellers chop asking prices as housing market slows - Cuts of up to 20% are now common as analysts see signs of a 'hard landing'

Boston-area homeowners trying to sell their houses are sharply reducing asking prices -- in some cases, by $100,000 or more -- in response to the sudden slowdown in the real estate market.

In Cambridge, price cuts averaged $300,000 in a sampling of a dozen houses listed in the $1.25 million to $4.3 million price range. In suburbs like Tewksbury and Hopkinton, homes originally listed for around $500,000 have been slashed to the low $400,000s.

''The evidence -- both early data and the anecdotes -- are pointing more toward a hard rather than a soft landing" in the housing market, said Nicholas Perna, an economic consultant in Ridgefield, Conn. ''Prices could come down. Could it be 10 to 15 percent? There's no way of knowing, but what we're getting is more clues that you've got a decline in prices underway.

But those who need to sell quickly -- couples in the midst of a divorce, employees who are relocating to another region, or owners who are purchasing another home, for example -- may have no choice but to entertain offers they would have scoffed at months or even weeks ago.
''It's unbelievable," said Polly Drinkwater, an agent with Coldwell Banker Cambridge, who has dropped the price on one of her listings $550,000, or 22 percent, since March.

These ''are very large drops," she said.