It continues to amaze me anywhere I go (and I mean ANYWHERE I go), without me even getting into it, people bring up and want to talk about housing prices. Even with perfect strangers.
Are you seeing and hearing the same thing in your neck of the woods?
November 18, 2006
HousingPanic Stupid Question of the Day
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I'm posting anon just in case. My husband works with a woman who is going through a divorce, and she has been telling everyone that she is trying to postpone/extend it until next Spring. The reason? She thinks the house will be worth more money by then. My husband couldnt believe what he was hearing.
This is proof that most people have no idea this bubble has burst...most of these people are not prepared for the worst case seranio to happen.
Also, I know of some anxious folks who are in the process of buying homes now.
It's just unbelievable that people are so in the dark, and willing to blow themselves up financially.
I did the same thing in 2000. I had 12,000 options that I purchased for $1.30. At one point the shares were at $190 and fell to $120 by the time I was vested. I thought no way I'm selling now. Then the shares dropped to $50 and I thought f**k no way I'm selling now, it's gotta go back up. And so it went dow to 40, 30, 20. I finally sold at $12. The company went under about 9 months later.
People are idiots, myself included. I just couldn't make myself believe what was really happening.
Here in Las Vegas people still talk about it. Prices have not gone down here even with the inventory rising daily. Sellers are not budging on price, they still expect to get what their neighbor sold for a year ago.
She thinks the house will be worth more money by then. My husband couldnt believe what he was hearing.
This is proof that most people have no idea this bubble has burst...most of these people are not prepared for the worst case seranio to happen.
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That is what the NAR keeps telling her. I sat the bubble out. So did my now wife. We will start low balling in teh spring, but I'm expecting sellers still to be hard a$$es then. Maybe summer/fall.
Yeah, people still talk about appreciation around here. "I can't believe how much equity I've gained over the last year" is still common place. But, I have to admit, normal houses are still selling at about ten percent more than they did last year. On the one hand, it makes me think I've been sheltered from the bubble (most places WERE sheltered from the 25% plus annual increases), and on the other, well, we lag behind the east and west coast by a good bit with most trends, so maybe I should sell now and take profits, I don't know though, I'm kinda liking that 5.5% fixed rate.
HPers, take a look at this
http://tinyurl.com/kh74j
If you thought the Fed was pumping prior to the election, well guess what, they've kicked it up to warp 8 now!
Mortgage rates are headed down, the fix is in boys and girls. Watch as refis fuel a huge holiday season and all those sh_tbox houses in Vegas and Phoenix get sold.
It may be the final days of Rome, but it's not going to look like Grapes of Rath anytime soon. There is just too much money for any doomsday scenarios to pan out in the next year or two.
the main thing i am hearing now is everyone is blaming the media for slowing or crash in the market.
New Jersey shore news !!!
FEWER BUILDING PERMITS: Down 21 percent in Ocean
KARA HOMES: End of boom helped contribute to bankruptcy
Housing market slows down
Posted by the Asbury Park Press on 11/18/06
BY DAVID P. WILLIS
BUSINESS WRITER
The pace of new home construction at the Jersey Shore has slowed this year as builders put on the brakes amid turmoil in the overall housing market.
The number of building permits issued in Monmouth County through the first nine months of the year fell to 1,103, down 12.9 percent, compared with the same period last year, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. In Ocean County, it fell to 1,503, down 21 percent.
Nationally, construction of new single-family homes and apartments dropped 14.6 percent in October from September to an annual rate of 1.486 million units, the slowest pace since July 2000, the Commerce Department said Friday. Construction in October stood 27.4 percent below the level of activity a year ago, the biggest year-over-year decline in more than 15 years.
“Builders have seen the light from the housing market meltdown and are now moving as rapidly as possible to reduce supply,” said Joel Naroff, chief economist at Commerce Bank. “A tornado hit the housing sector in October.”
The slowdown in the housing market is said to have played a role in the downfall of East Brunswick-based Kara Homes Inc., one of the largest builders in Monmouth and Ocean counties. The company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in October.
Other large developers have said that while the market is slow, they remain financially strong.
Nationally, the country has experienced the largest housing boom in history over the last five years, said Patrick J. O’Keefe, chief executive officer of the New Jersey Builders Association.
New Jersey has not experienced that same record-setting pace, given the amount of the state that is already developed as well as restrictions on new development, he said.
Still, building permits have declined consistently this year in New Jersey, O’Keefe said.
“Builders are cutting back on the number of projects they are starting,” O’Keefe said. “Even within projects, they are aggressively managing inventory.”
As a whole, the building industry in New Jersey was alert to a slowdown in the resale market, O’Keefe said. Typically, new home buyers are people who need to sell existing houses.
“Builders took their foot off the accelerator,” he said.
Earlier this year, builders began to see more order cancellations and more unsold lots, he said.
“Builders across the board, every price point and every region of the state, have curtailed activity, and they will continue to do so well into 2007,” O’Keefe said.
Companies feeling it
At Red Bank-based Hovnanian Enterprises Inc., net contracts in the fourth quarter ended Oct. 31 were down 36 percent compared with last year’s fourth quarter, the company said in announcing preliminary results earlier this month.
Buyers canceled contracts in part because of an inability to sell their existing homes, the company said. Hovnanian Enterprises is New Jersey’s largest home builder.
“Our financial results for the fourth quarter continued to be negatively impacted by high cancellation rates and increased use of concessions and incentives, particularly on the resale of those homes which experienced contract cancellations,” said Ara Hovnanian, president and chief executive officer, in a statement.
The company’s concessions vary across the company and include mortgage-financing arrangements, and free upgrades and options on houses, a spokesman said.
Hovnanian expressed optimism that the company will see decreasing cancellations and improved sales in some of its more challenging markets. “However, we have not seen signs of such improvement to date, despite reasonably healthy levels of buyer traffic at many of our communities,” he said.
The company also renegotiated some land option contracts and walked away from its deposits in some others, Hovnanian said.
http://www.app.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20061118/NEWS/611180353
Are you seeing and hearing the same thing in your neck of the woods?
Yes indeed. Even people at the bank are taking notice of the current drop in housing prices.
Some are convinced that it's just a seasonal thing -- "sales always drop off in winter and always pick up again in spring" -- and others are beginning to think that maybe real estate is actually crashing.
Nov 18, 2006
Home prices continue to rise
Sales are down, but the Orlando market is on target for its 2nd-best year ever.
Home prices in the Orlando area continued to withstand an onslaught of rising inventory and falling sales last month, easing fears of plunging real-estate values in Central Florida even as the air goes out of the housing market nationwide.
Orlando Regional Realtor Association members closed on 1,792 sales during October in their core market, down 24 percent from October 2005, when the market was still red hot, the trade group reported Friday.
Click here to find out more!
The number of homes for sale rose by 1,005 to 21,324 -- nearly a year's worth of houses at the recent sales pace. Yet the median price was up 5.3 percent from a year ago, to $259,900, an all-time high and the sharpest 12-month percentage gain since May.
The average listing price also topped $320,000 for the first time in October, even as the average number of days a home spent on the market rose to 74 -- more than double the time it took to sell the average home last year.
But with more than twice as many homes on the market this fall as last, and the sales pace continuing to slow, sellers are worried about buyers remaining on the sideline expecting a price "bubble" to burst.
East Orange County homeowner Mike Nuccio, nervously sitting on his unsold house with a job transfer looming, fears that aggressive new-home marketers with their discount deals are taking the air out of the area's existing-home sales.
Nuccio's Waterford Lakes home has been on the market for about six weeks without a single call, even though he has cut the asking price for the four-bedroom, two-bath home from $324,900 to $315,000.
He recently accepted a physician's assistant position in the Panhandle, where the family of his wife, Brigitta, lives. The job starts shortly after Jan. 1.
"How do you compete with new-home incentives?" said Nuccio, whose house was built in 1998. "I need to move."
He said one Realtor recommended he throw in a plasma-screen television as a sales incentive, to mimic the tactics of the home builders.
"If I could afford a plasma-screen TV, I would hang it on my wall," he said.
Nuccio fears he may have to cut his asking price even more.
'Like a spiral staircase'
Winter Park Realtor Randy Martin, recently installed as president of the Orlando Regional Realtor Association, said new homes with their higher prices have been propping up resale values in hot-growth areas such as Central Florida.
"It's like a spiral staircase," Martin said. "It's caused a lot of stress on the affordable-housing, or work-force housing, segment. It's definitely priced more people out of the market."
But Martin, an agent with RE/MAX 200 Realty, said he does not foresee any significant relief on the pricing front, forecasting that "prices will continue to rise, not decrease," in the Orlando area.
Gains will be modest, he said, nothing like the double-digit percentage increases of recent years, now that investor demand has eased.
Year-to-date sales of homes in the Orlando core market, mainly Orange and Seminole counties, totaled 23,581 through October -- 9.2 percent below 2005's record pace.
Martin noted that Orlando's housing market is still on target to have the second-best year in its history.
http://tinyurl.com/y7br8z
Veronia said:"Some are convinced that it's just a seasonal thing -- "sales always drop off in winter and always pick up again in spring" -- and others are beginning to think that maybe real estate is actually crashing".
For some reason, homeowners think the same way about a Spring bounce. 2-3 years ago, in the dead of Winter, houses were selling like hot cakes. The season has nothing to do with it. Everyone is drinking the same flavor Kool-Aid.
Speaking of Kool-Aid...
Love the pic Veronica, it's great!
Honica, where do you live? What city? Give us a perspective on Where as all markets are so divergent.
Got an email today from a friend in Phoenix at the hospital where I use to work and a nurse that had been sitting on the sidelines (I told her to wait and buy next year) couldn't wait anymore and bought a house. I think we'll see a lot more of this as people are more concerned with the interest rate and their payment (kind of like credit cards) than what they owe. So we'll see what happens after xmas. I think the government and the ruling elite are pumping up the stock market to make people feel/believe that things are great so they'll jump back in the market (stocks and houses) in 2007. I all of my stock investments in April when I moved to Austin because I felt that stocks and housing would both loose steam. Don't think I really lost much on stocks as most of mine were investsed overseas but I really don't want to know (Kind of like being in Vegas and walking away from a slot and then seeing the person come up behind you and hit a bigger jackpot) since most of those investements had doubled in two years. Still, as I've learned, no one can time the markets and no one really knows 100% (unless maybe a insider trader?) what will happen next. House bubble? Pop? Fizzle? Slow leak? Take off runnig for another year? I just don't know.
Rhoid said: " I told him I'm going to wait until next fall and start low-balling people".
My husband and I go to the very few open houses here in SW Reno, and we just tell them we're not ready to buy. They still follow us from room to room hoping we'll change our mind.
What kind of responses do you get to your candid statement of lowballing?
Honica, have you read any articles on the "lost tribes of Israel?" Of course back in the 1800s the AngloIsraelite theory was quite in vogue that the British were the lost tribes and then again the Holy Blood/Holy Grail that the Merovigian dynasty from which every royal house in Europe is descended was Jewish and the fluer de lis and the golden bee a symbol of the Royal house of David. Have you read about the lost tribes making it to Japan? Read a very interesting piece comparing Shintoism and its rites, rituals, traditions, songs, words, that give a pretty convincing picture that the lost tribes made it to Japan. Kyoto was called the "city of peace", Shinto shrines mimic the tabernacle, they practice a ritual remembering the sacrice of Isaac, there are mogen david's on shinto shrines, it said that the emperor is circumsised, that the mirror in the holy of holies of the main shinto shrine has the hebrew name of god on the back etc.
You like to bash jews but we know that modern day jews make up just a small portion being the remenants of the tribes of Judah (Jew) Benjamin and Levi. The other tribes were scattered and intermingled with europeans, asians, africans. Also if Isaac and Ishmael were half-brothers how does your antisemtisism relate to arabs who are mostly descendents of the same western semetic tribes?
Just curious.
The topic comes up here more frequently, but everyone still seems to have the "Won't Happen Here" attitude. The only development in the area already has finished, overpriced, empty sh#tboxes with 'For Rent" signs in the empty windows.
Most of my long haul construction friends are either out of work and looking, down to a few days a week, or going even farther than usual to hold down
work (when they can.) They think (hope) it will pick back up in the spring. I hope, for their sakes, they are right.
My wife doesn't know my blog handle, or I would have to post anon also. She, like a lot of people, knows what's coming (she does anyway, thanks to me,) BUT DOESN'T WANT TO KNOW or be reminded. I can only imagine what goes thru peoples minds that are in total denial.
Keep that head buried in the sand.
If you won't see it, it can't hurt you
I've have a housing bubble multi-search engine at http://housingbubblesearch.blogspot.com and I'm seeing a gathering snowball of news and video. I also know two people that are losing their homes due to refi and moving in with relatives. They are both in their fifties.
To Darth Toll-Agreed,the Fed has the power to cause a depression.I would add that IMO it is deliberate on their part.
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Nail on the head.
House Bubble (credit bubble) was with intent, they (FED BANK) do not have oversights or make mistakes, imo.
No
I'm not surprised a lot of retail is going out of business in NY city. Rents cost! That is due to high property values or loans. I'm sorry but even before the bubble I use to ask how so many mom and pop stores could survive payiing such high rents. Even if you paid $1200 a month to rent a small resturant, after utilities, operating costs, salaries for staff, insurance, how much food would you have to sell each day just to break even? An advantage for all those street markets in Europe and Asia, low overhead.
Part of the cycle of human greed. They always kill the goose.
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