We ranted and raved for months about what was to come, and then now it's come. The long unwinding is upon us. Prices are falling, inventory is exploding, and a whiff of panic is in the air.
Ding dong the Housing Ponzi Scheme is dead.
Should we be surprised? How does it make you long-time bubble-believers feel? Happy? Vindicated? Troubled? Unpopular? Angry?
Have you told anybody "I told you so" this month, or are you keeping a low profile?
And do you feel you've prepared enough?
May 30, 2006
Somedays, I still can't believe the end of the housing bubble is here
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I am still impatient because I feel like the only person in Central Florida that knows what is going on. If the sellers and RE Agents knew, I could get my 40% reduced RE Deal faster.
he he he
But Keith,
How do you feel? Now we want to watch the aftermath with you.
When we sold our house in March 2005, we told everybody that we were selling because the market had reached or was about to reach the peak. Everyone shook their heads. My mother was disgusted (which just reinforced my decision because she is the most unsophisticated invester ever) and told all her friends that we were panicing.
The tide has changed! A number of people have told us that we were right. This is usually done in a low, unhappy voice.
My mother has quit with her negative comments and no longer brags about how much her house went up last week.
More than a little scared. I've been reading blogs like these:
http://economicrot.blogspot.com/2005/12/housing-bubble-much-bigger-than.html
and am getting the feeling that the "house as ATM" mentality of the past five years is the only thing holding this economy up.
Other than that, I'll be glad to see overdevelopment stop in my neighborhood. The world needs affordable rentals, not $1M condos.
I'd feel better if it wasn't for my mother's refusal to sell her home in Central Florida during the peak. She just "likes the area too much". Her house more than doubled in less than two years. I wish she would sell and rent.
I bought a cheap house in 2002. My payment is less than what my rent was for twice the space and over an acre of land. The area was rural when I moved in, since it has become an exurb. I don't feel panicked, since I can more than afford payments and there is a lot of job growth in the area. Cheap housing and cheap land seems to be a draw for corporations.
I learned long ago not to say the words "crash" or "bubble." People are just way too defensive.
Now, whenever relevant, I say that we rent because things are "volatile" or "up in the air." Or I say "Things are changing in DC now."
And $inthebank, I can relate to the issues with the parents. We were telling ours years ago (2004) that there was a housing bubble in progress. They insisted they needed to buy their FL retirement home immediately or "be priced out FOREVER." So, they took on the second mortgage and it pains me now, because they are struggling with the negative cashflow. Their renters don't even cover half the mortgage. Sigh.
I'm still renting my 1190sf apartment for $735/mo hahahahaha
2-bdr
2-bth
study
Great security with 4 cops living in a 198-unit complex and only 5 minutes from work. Even with my student loans and car payment, I still save almost $1000/mo
Too bad for you suckers paying $4K/mo along with $300/mo in energy bills.
I feel wiser. I'm keeping a low profile. I haven't told anybody "I told you so" but tried few times to talk about the subject.. only to be looked at strangely and as if I'm stupid. So I shut up.
I'm happily renting. zero debt.
Realtor left the "profession"
I had a real estate agent in San Diego who used to send me email listings once a week. . .I noticed a month went by and no listings? Strange - when I called the office, they said, "he no longer works here.". . .I inquired, and he is now working at a software company. . .I finally tacked him down, and he said, "there is NO business, and people were leaving his office in droves."
I sold all my houses and have half in gold. Started buying at $450 an oz. The other half is split, 40% in mt safe & 60% in my bank account. My IRA ( about 600k ) is split 40% money market, 20% gold mining, and 40% in Mr MSFT.
I like to play Mr Softy. I always by in around 23 or 24 and start selling when it goes up a couple bucks.
As to your question, I don't feel safe. Some days, it's all I can do to not go pull all my money out of my bank and run for the hills!
My main goal in the next few months is to keep a close eye on the markets and be ready to move depending on what happens going forward.
I repeat, it is still too early to declare a sweeping victory. Yeah, in the bubble markets prices are going tro come down, but even there, the damage may be only 10-20% unless we have a recession. Nationwide, we still could be looking at a soft landing. To really pop the thing, you'll need a recession and much higher foreclosures. Otherwise we will just see a long period of flat prices and a slow decline in real prices.
"Nationwide, we still could be looking at a soft landing."
nice to see david lereah sign in
the mass unemployment among just the real estate economy will drive us into recession. add in the sharp and horrific drop in consumer spending as the wealth effect disappears (again) and you have the mother of all recessions
soft landing my A$$! There will be no soft landing. We are now way past the point of the chance of a soft landing. The housing ATM is going to catch up so fast and we will soon see the crooked stats that have been show to convice us that all is well. All is not well, dont be fooled!!!
Use your brain, dont just listen to what you are told. Party is OVER!!
To determine if the real estate bubble is really popping, try looking at things that people don't need: Harleys (or Yamaha's, BMW's, whatever), boats, vacations, and second homes. All of these and more are what used to be known as "white elephants" which is to say nice but useless. When these "toys" go into a deep slump, then look out because the money is drying up.
House prices have not come down enough yet. We are still waiting to buy. I don't consider dropping $10-20k on a $700k house a price reduction! These realtors and sellers need to get serious. We have stopped looking at houses and probably won't look again until after the summer.
Just goes to show what happens when Alfred E. Neuman is elected President by the Pilsbury Dougboy.
Roid
I feel relieved and a bit vindicated.
I started shorting homebuilder stocks in June 2005 using funds from a HELOC, so was a little early to the bubble bursting party.
I quadrupled my HELOC line and shorted more from Oct. 2005.
This timing means I've had to endure significant paper losses during the past year.
The beautiful thing about shorting stocks is you get paid interest on your initial capital. This margin interest partially offsets the HELOC interest.
FINALLY these HB short positions are now solidly in the black! It appears that I may be able to match my annual income with my shorting profits by the end of this year.
I have also learned to keep a low profile and to keep these strategies and opinions to myself. Something about human nature - everybody wants to be involved in shared misery. Herd behavior is not for me.
Many people I know have been caught up in this mania, despite my efforts to dissuade them. Now I just keep my mouth shut.
This will be a good story to explain to my young son someday when he is old enough.
I've been signing these comments with the same handle as my posts from the Yahoo! message boards --
prof_investor_40
p.s. currently short BZH, CTX, TOL, RYL. also GOOG.
p.p.s. also have put 1/3rd of my retirement savings into GLD as an inflation/dollar hedge. other 2/3 is in cash.
prof_investor_40
Please keep posting. I for one am not very good at the whole stock market thing. I have some stock in Verizon and electric, but am always open to ideas. Thanks and I'm older than your son, but never to old to learn!
California will be 1/4 owned by the banks.
I feel wiser. I'm keeping a low profile. I haven't told anybody "I told you so" but tried few times to talk about the subject.. only to be looked at strangely and as if I'm stupid. So I shut up.
Right on the money, I try to get a topic going and i always end up on the defence end of the conversation.."yet"
I here my friends complain a lot about the cost of things and how broke they are ect,ect. But when it comes to housing "oh" my house is worth $350,000 "to who I say" You are only paper rich, Alas a false sence of wealth.
A new phrase has been added to the Californian lexicon:
"House rich, cash poor"
Have you told anybody "I told you so" this month, or are you keeping a low profile?
Not yet possible. All the smart ones are sitting on their warchests and every time we see each other and see the secret lodge tatoo we wink and nod and lay a finger to the side of our nose and smile. NFW am I gonna make myself a target. Remember all the FBs are already irrational. Financial pressures aren't going to force them to suddenly grow a brain. They aren't going to blame THEMSELVES. Instead they'll look around and who will they remember? That's right the arrogant sh@t who was all smug and bragging about how they got out on top. THis will not be an orderly retreat, it will not be a retracement, it will not be a reversion to mean, a permanently high plateau, a pause, a ... you get it. It will be bloody, and confusing and innocents will get hurt. You are going to have to stand in the grocery line with the dad whose kids are asking why they can't have any chicken this week. You are going to have to drive by the back parking lot of the Costco and see lights in motorhomes at 7 in the morning. Why the neighbors don't park in the garage anymore. Why the public schools are seeing unexpected enrollment. What happened to the lawncare/pool care/childcare/housekeepers. Not a depression but for people who think Hawaii instead of Fiji is cutting back it will feel like one.
well done
Robert Coté
great read
http://tinyurl.com/j74bd
I stopped trying to bring up the subject. Just wasen't worth the effort. People just roll their eyes: "There he goes again". Even the wife has her head in the sand and can't be bothered. No bubble here, so we won't be affected!
What I have invested,in anything, is meaningless because the future is so damned hard to predict(thats why they call it the future!).
Not a day goes by that I do not pray for my country. I'm scared! Its really going to be bad!
This thing is going to make the 29 crash seem like a cake walk. At least we'll all be in it together. And this really applies to those of use who are ready.
The only thing I have left to do is buy a gun.
up in Vancouver Canada it is still "different here" (crazy). We are asked constantly when we are going to buy. We rent for 1/3 what our mortgage would be on an equivalent place (not counting maintenance). No-one wants to hear that there could possibly be any way house prices may drop.
I remember that one...
"House rich, cash poor"
Due to very sick mother-
medical costs and mortgage caused my folk to be considered House poor. It sucked. Never got new clothes - always the "thrift" shop... 2nd hand worn out threads.
Was lucky to have enough change to buy school lunch at special "hardship" reduced prices.
It could be said that because I grew up simmilar to many older folks who lived through the Great Depression; that I think like one of those penny pinchen old misers.
First learned the Value of the Buck as a youngster. Then when I grew up after the internet bubble poped and sucked $50K out of my ass. I grew up a bit more and learned the value of GOLD AND SILVER!
My newly discovered wisdom over the past few years has made me financially independent (retireable) at the young age of 44 years old.
I fear that a whole new generation of now spoiled brats are going to get the BIGGEST LESSON of their life when they are taken out to the woodshed on their RE speculations.
I hear lots of stories about the RE bubble collaping In S florida. Phoenix and Scramento but LA county seems to be lagging behind the curve. I think that the Re collapse in Scal will start at the outer desert/Inland empire fringes and work their way toward the coast. Looks like a seller-buyer standoff all over Scal-a game of chicken. I would not bet on the sellers. A large array of tidal forces is working toward a leveling off/decline in SCal houseing prices. Lots of new construction in all types of units
going up in LA/OC,Inland empire counties. More condos/apts in LA/OC and more SFH's in IE. The affordability issue . Skyrocketing foreclosure rates. A host of recent immigrants(many illegal) moving in as tenants in formerly spotless middle-class older burb, causing property values to decline.
A ton of ARM's,teasers, suicide loans coming due in 2006-07, ad infinum.
I am still impatient etc.
Thanks Zinger. (:
I want to keep the purchasing power of my money. I am looking at a quad plex a few blocks from Daytona Beach for only $259,000. Rents for $600.00 per unit @ month.
I need a place to live.
I can out rent 3 units, live in the fourth.
Want to have a 30% LTV. This will buy down my payments and I can just SURVIVE!
I am not as sophisticated as the HP Bloggers are, and I want to protect my future and my measly $90,000.00 cash.
I rent and my lease is up in Oct.......
Jeez, I feel like a deer in the headlights.
I am not going to tell anyone I told you so. If one is too deluded to not hear the slowest moving train coming and step off the tracks then one is probably not going to remember what I predicted anyhow. Just like the easily predicted catastrophe
in Iraq you could see this coming years in advance. All you had to do was a little reading and critical thinking, very little and that's what will continue to amaze me.
These people are not on crack or meth or sumthin. The new drug of choice is materialism. People get their high from buying stuff. More and more stuff is needed to give them the quick fix. Eventually a bigger and bigger fix is needed to get the high and houses become overpriced.
They are on shrooms......
I live in a blue state.
So I am really getting a kick out of some of these replies.
Some of you guys are very good at making it sound like you know what you're talking about. Trust me, you don't.
This is how bad information gets passed around, and some HPers will believe anything.
/fark.com cliche
You sound very confident. Trust me you're not.
The soft landing already happened. Prices are already down 10%. Now the rest of the plane will come crashing into the runway cement.
I was in the gym, and the nursery attendant, told me she had a house on the market. I said, "yeah, things are slowing down."
All of a sudden, four people almost started yelling at me. One had a house they were renovating, one had just purchased a house, one was flipping a house, ect.
They were so aggitated, telling me, "I was wrong, and I'd better not be right".
I shut up pretty quick. Didn't want to cause a riot. I guess many people are only now starting to doubt that things will go up forever. The big builders in Austin, are already discounting their new houses 10%, but all you see is positive housing stories in the local press.
It will take awhile for the laggards to realize they already missed the boat.
austingal,
Interesting gym story. Thanks for sharing.
I've also witnessed these edgy personality types. That's why my mouth is now shut.
Evidently we are past denial and people are well into the fear stage.
prof_investor_40
I opened my mouth about realestate losing 5-10% already and few people jumped on me, threatening to fight w/ me outside..WTF.
now i will keep my mouth shut
How do I feel about the end of the Bubble? Well, for one thing I feel great relief that I escaped unscathed, because I just closed on my house in Central Florida today, which I bought at $200,000 a year ago and managed to sell for $245,000 after only a few weeks (But my realtor told me I could go as high as $269,000, and I know damn well if I'd listened I would not have sold my house. Things are slowing down here and inventory is stacking up like everwhere else.) But honestly, I feel terrible for all those people out there who are going to go broke. Why is it so wrong to want to make money investing in real estate? Is it any worse than short selling stocks? I actually looked into the real estate investor thing myself - I thought about buying a pre-construction condo and then selling it a year later for a lot more money. I didn't go through with it because realized I couldn't afford to take the risk, but I wouldn't have felt the least bit immoral if I had done it and made money off it.
- Florida girl
"Anonymous said...
How do I feel about the end of the Bubble? Well, for one thing I feel great relief that I escaped unscathed, because I just closed on my house in Central Florida today, which I bought at $200,000 a year ago and managed to sell for $245,000 after only a few weeks (But my realtor told me I could go as high as $269,000, and I know damn well if I'd listened I would not have sold my house. Things are slowing down here and inventory is stacking up like everywhere else.) But honestly, I feel terrible for all those people out there who are going to go broke. Why is it so wrong to want to make money investing in real estate? Is it any worse than short selling stocks?"
No different in any way,shape,or form. Houses CAN take longer to sell than stocks, so time ,AND not timing, is the only difference.
I bear no ill will towards the flippers who got out on top and made a bundle, nor do I feel any remorse for the "greater fool" who got in last and will ride the crash to rock bottom.
They ALL gambled with money (earned or borrowed,) some won, some lost. A housing collapse
can take down the economy, a stock market collapse can do the same.
Whether you decide to use the brain that God gave you is your most important decision. After that, WHAT, WHEN, and WHERE to invest is up to you!
we are past denial and people are well into the fear stage.
EXACTLY!!!
Robert hit it on the head. Misery loves company. I personally lost my home, dont have any gold or silver, my business is in the toilet,have no savings, and live with my mother.
I learned to keep my mouth shut, after I sent some emails to bother in law, with a newly bought house in South Florida, about the housing bubble 1 year ago. He replied saying how glad he was he just finished re-financing his house with a home equity loan. With the money he was to pay off his wife's car, and furnish their new home. Then, I got a mad email from his wife, (who is mortgage broker) about how the bubble is bull++++ and sent some long email quoting Greenspan. Now, one year later, shes on maternity leave with their first baby, and I wonder if shes going to even have a job to come back to... Keeping my mouth shut..... from now on.....
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