March 12, 2007

Yes, looking back, it now looks so obvious. So stupid. The housing bubble was hilarious.

Phoenix and Vegas are the funniest. Well, funny to HP'ers, probably not too funny to desperate homedebtors and ramen-eating real estate clerks in Phoenix and Vegas....

10 comments:

Anonymous said...

Those Phoenix and Vegas charts are hilarious!

David in JAX said...

There should be a second housing mania scale for HPers.

Instead of moving from "Denial" to "Fear", HPers are moving from "Told You So" to "HaHa!".

Anonymous said...

Another reason not to like those forsaken places.

Anonymous said...

It's not funny to me, I'm a stuck homeowner.... and this blog is hurting my feelings. Stop it, ok.

Anonymous said...

Just like the hot desert air... home equity in Phoenix is evaporating away. Fear not: there will always be the burger flipper jobs.

Hey, maybe Swann will go sell real estate in Guadalajara now??? A cheesey white guy like him will fit right in...

Anonymous said...

I was surprised to Seattle had held so well. Will they be immune to the coming fall? Unlikely, but since they did not see the meteoric climb, we can predict the fall will not be as dramatic either.
+++++++++
No way Seattle will be immune from the fall. We've had more than enough rise in median housing prices and the use of exotic mortgages to guarantee a crash sometime this year or next. We're just behind the rest of the country by about a year, that's all....

Joe said...

Looking at that Vegas graph, and seeing that tiny, acute peak break through the top of that chart, and knowing I offloaded my house at that point in time... that feels good, man. Thanks for the feel good moment, Keith.

Too bad for all those suckers who "own" those ugly, HOA-nazi controlled stucco boxes in Vegas and Phoenix now, even the pre-bubble ones. Good luck finding a buyer when you need to sell. Run hamsters, run!

Anonymous said...

These graphs are accurate, but misleading. They are year-over-year percentage increases/decreases, not chartlines based on real value.

Don't wrongly conclude that once the chartline hits zero that the bloodbath is over; it is just beginning because it will take additional year-over-year declines for the houseing bust to deflate, slowly, as it must.

Anonymous said...

Seattle's median home price shot up 60K in the first half of 2006 and has basically faltlined since then. The problem is inventory still remains low. The democrats in the 90's slapped bad zoning laws on downtown Seattle so developers just built houses in all directions outside the city, but demand could never keep up with supply as many californians relocated here. Now only liberals and socialists are being elected and taxes are on the rise everywhere.
Seattle currently is a city were almost nobody lives in the downtown area. Now you have urban sprawl and gridlock traffic everywhere. Just last year, they lifted the rules on how tall condo towers downtown could be built. Within a few months, dozens of large scale luxury condo towers were annouced and are currently starting or about to start within the next 6 months. Thousands of new condos for downtown Seattle and the Bellevue area where all the microsoft money is located.
Seattle will be late to the game for a correction. Its correction won't start untill later 2007/early 2008 when a lot these projects start coming online while the rest of the country is already being hit from the bubble bursting.

Anonymous said...

It's pretty funny reading these comments. I am going to guess that these are the same people who thought Yahoo stock was worth $375 a share in the late 90's. Of course it's mania, of course it's over priced when people with 600 credit can get 100% financing with no documentation. Using one's head versus one's ass is key to note making stupid deals.