April 10, 2007

New spin for MSM and "economists" - The housing bubble was so obvious. No freaking duh!

If it was so damn obvious, why weren't major alarm bells going off in 2004? 2005? 2006? Why do we STILL have so many in "denial" today? Why is the Fed saying "all will be well" and why are so many saying "we've hit bottom".


Why? Because what's been obvious to HP'ers for so long is just now becoming obvious to others. The Late Great Housing Bubble was a classic financial mania, a classic Ponzi Scheme. And the Great Housing Crash of 2006 - 20XX? will be a classic crash and unwinding.

Here's a column by Marketwatch's chief economist. Enjoy. And be happy that you knew what was coming all along and prepared the best you could, even when others didn't, and still don't know what's about to hit 'em.

End of housing bubble should have been obvious to everyone

Why are so many people so surprised that the housing market has weakened and that a growing number of loans are in default? It should have been as plain as the noses on their faces.

Since short-term rates were well below long-term rates, many people borrowed at adjustable rates, believing that rates would stay low indefinitely, or that housing prices would continue to rise indefinitely, thus enabling them to refinance at a fixed rate at some future date.

Needless to say, home prices rose even faster than before, as these lower rates (along with new types of loans and creative sales tactics) increased the effective demand for housing faster than supply.

In some areas, homes wound up costing five times the average family's income or even more. Nationwide, average home prices shot up 50% from 2000-2005 - clearly exceeding household income growth by a considerable margin.

Few were disturbed by these trends. Indeed, no less an authority than Alan Greenspan said in early 2004 (when short rates were at their lowest) that homeowners might have saved "tens of thousands of dollars" over the past decade had they held adjustable, rather than fixed-rate mortgages.

Coming from the person who, as head of the Federal Reserve, had the most control over short-term rates, this might have given borrowers and lenders alike the feeling that it was safe to borrow on a floating-rate basis, since the Fed was unlikely to raise short rates after giving them such a ringing endorsement.

All good things must come to an end, and the end to the housing bubble (which Greenspan belatedly characterized as "froth" by 2005) came as the Fed began hiking interest rates starting in the middle of 2004.

Rising rates reduced the demand for housing, causing prices in some areas to top out and start falling. Readers of this column were informed that the party was over and that some homeowners would soon have difficulty paying off their loans.

Others missed this sign until it was too late. Now they are trying to shut the barn door after the horse has escaped.


53 comments:

Anonymous said...

Well thank goodness we have GED holding $12 an hour HP renters that can figure out what guys with Harvard PhDs can't.

Thanks for the valuable service el-keefmeister.

BTW can point to any US city with a population of 50,000 or more where median **SALE** prices have fallen more than 5% in the past 2 years?

Didn't think so.

For all the mud you throw at the MSM for spinning you sure can spin yourself. You post story after story of doom and gloom yet at the end of the day prices tose 50% in 5 years and have stayed flat for the past 2 years. All in all a pretty damned good return over 7 years.

blogger said...

New Orleans-Metairie-Kenner, LA
Sarasota-Bradenton-Venice, FL
Palm Bay-Melbourne-Titusville, FL
Reno-Sparks, NV
Cape Coral-Fort Myers, FL
Cleveland-Elyria-Mentor, OH
Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater, FL
Wichita,KS
San Diego-Carlsbad-San Marcos, CA
Jacksonville,FL
Worcester,MA
Sacramento--Arden-Arcade-Roseville, CA
San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont, CA
Providence-New Bedford-Fall River, RI-MA
Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA-MD-WV

http://www.realtor.org/Research.nsf/Pages/MetroPrice

Any other questions troll? And don't forget, the NAR median price #s don't include the massive incentives and cash-back-at-closing BS going on

Only gutless trolls don't choose user names. It'd be so much more fun if we could mock you by name

Yes, HP'ers, there are still a few idiots out there living in denial. Must be desperate homedebtors or ramen eating REIC

blogger said...

DR Horton new home sales off 37% vs. last year, cancellations 32%. Nah, there's no housing crash underway. It's all good...

http://tinyurl.com/25zrww

Funniest thing is how these builder reports - big drops, big cancel rates, don't end up being reflected in the now-hilarious commerce department new homes sales report that the market sees (which doesn't include cancellations)

D.R. Horton Inc. (DHI.N: Quote, Profile , Research), the largest U.S. home builder, said on Tuesday orders for new homes tumbled 37 percent last quarter and that the spring selling season has begun more slowly than usual, suggesting a deepening of the U.S. housing downturn.

Chairman Donald Horton said conditions remain tough in most markets because of high inventories of unsold new and existing homes. He also said "the spring selling season has not gotten off to its usual strong start."

Anonymous said...

1st Anon:
Prices have dropped in bubble markets of FL and CA. Another better stat is to watch the market times for listings. We're not in a bubble market and upper bracket homes now have a 3.6 year supply of homes. That's a lot of inventory to sell!
A key to selling in a down market is to be the 1st to drastically reduce your price. Get greedy and get stuck.
I know a couple of floppers in FL that bought at the peak and now have a (un)realized 40% loss in values. They keep thinking the market will come back, IT WON'T!!! One will lose $200k the other is upside down over $300k.

Anonymous said...

Builder's can hide somethings, but they can't hide a lack of profits. The corp results are starting to report this week. It's getting ugly early. The whole stock market will collapse before the end of the month.

Got debt?

Anonymous said...

What bubble - just a little Froth

Anonymous said...

Washington Post FLASH: looser standards might have led to boom
http://tinyurl.com/34t5jo

These guys are in a time warp. That was news three years ago.

Anonymous said...

As an economist I can tell you that a huge proportion of economists believed that the housing price boom was probably partially a reflection of a correction from a period of undervaluation (the first leg) followed by an excessive mania that did indeed create a bubble. Such is often the case when any market shows a rapid appreciation and authorities are slow to put on the brakes -- people are thoughtless lemmings.

The reason you didn't see it in the MSM was bcse such talk does not sell newspapers, nor soap, and is unpopular with viewers.

I will hasten to add that The Economist magazine started warning about a housing bubble quite a long time ago. 2005 certainly but I suspect even a bit earlier than that.

Anonymous said...

"These guys are in a time warp. That was news three years ago."

Nah, they're just in the advertising business and they know where their bread is buttered.

Anonymous said...

I don't have the exact stats but if you were to Google "Housing Bubble" in 2002-2003 you would have gotten 10 hits. Half of which would have referred to the LAST HB! There wasn't any mainstream recognition until at least late 2003 that "something" might be wrong.

Well by 2004! I was already sick and tired of watching friends and neighbors pretend they were rich by refi'ng themselves into oblivion! I sold my house on the last day of 2003 and had to sit by and watch rates suppressed to articial lows for another 2 years. Everyone and their long lost brother seemed to know that the Fed wasn't going to raise in any kind of a meaningful way so they continued to buy, and continued to borrow.

Thankfully (like a great fever) things peaked in 2005 and the "Great Tanking" is gathering steam by the day. Again, the bubble was *not* a post 9/11 event! It started in the late 90's as a more or less legit bull market and then morphed into sheer madness. There should have been a lot more doubt a lot earlier, BUT... when everyone's gettin' drunk and gettin' l@id???

DinOR

Anonymous said...

LMAO Keith, the listing of places 5% declines may be the best response I've ever seen to our lurking FB trolls.

The market is falling... In my close-in prime DC area neighborhood (Mont County, Md), our realtor confessed prices have dropped 10-15% percent for comparable houses over the past year or so. And Northern Va and Dc are doing much worse!

Antecdotely, the people I know still looking to buy are streaching their budget farther than ever. So people haven't gotten the concept of limiting risk/ debt servicing by limiting purchases to reasonable multiples of income. They are just looking for more house for the money. When this message enters the collective phyche and the credit tightens (which just began last month mind you!), prices will fall and fall hard.

Also, DC in the final round of it's job bubble. Wait till the federal government is forced to cut spending. People making 100K and more are living paycheck to paycheck in DC; I've had 3 folks in my department of 7 ask for personal loans in the past week - ah... tax time! One guy said that he was looking at mortgages and could get the house he wants for 6700/ month IO ARM. Not including taxes, PMI, insurance, upkeep, and energy costs. He is renting now, but already has creditors calling him at work. Things have just begun.

America will unfortunately suffer and someday the concept of thrift, real economic production, resonsible governance, and ongoing work for wealth will return. I hope. When that happens, and oil goes through the roof, and immigration is managed, decent jobs will return to heartland away from the costal glamour cities. Homes will be places to live.

Anyone want to explain to me, how the U.S. is more competitive with cheap foreign markets by moving all the working age population to a few over built cities where costs are through the roof and workers need to be paid double what they would in Kansas?!?

Thanks Keith for helping American move into a era of reality. Someday we will rise again.

Anonymous said...

WOW Al QWEEFER, 15 cities that went up 100%+ fell 10%. 15 cities out of 150 metro areas in the country. OK you win the real estate crahs is on!!

Except that those 15 are more like 10 since SF/OAK/SAC, Tampa/Sarasota and (a stretch I know) JAX/Palm Bay are the same market and are being double counted. Plus using NO as an example of anything is just silly for obviosu reasons.

So 10 mainly small cities have experienced declines in prices. What about Las vegas, Phoenix, NYC, Boston, Chicago, Seattle, Portland, Dallas, Houston, Atlanta, Los Angeles, Denver. Why aren't they on the list? You've been crying wolf for 2 years that Phoenix would implode. Yet it's down a WHOPPING 4% since 2005. Same with Las Vegas.

Better get ready for soup lines with that kind of deprectaion.

blogger said...

to the gutless anon troll (pick a user name you wimp) the NAR market decline numbers are the only thing we've got

in truth, almost every market in the US has fallen 5% or more from the peak. It's not even close. Double digits is more like it. But there is no credible or accurate measure of this, so you'll just have to go by what you hear from the markets. And unless you're blind, you can see it's ugly out there.

But take the NAR and commerce department reports with a grain of sand. They're not worth the paper they're printed on.

If you're so confident that housing isn't tanking, then by all means go out there and buy buy buy! Or if you're a desperate homedebtor, put your home out for the price it would have gone for a year ago. You'll not have a single showing. Not a one.

Anonymous said...

Keith, what would you be saying if it was 1979-1982 right now? Skyrocketing oil, stagflation, high unemployment, manufacturing shutting down, Japan killing us economically, interest rates that shoot up above 14%, etc.

Our economy today is not even close to that, yet you cry wolf, that the sky is falling, and that the greatest ______ (ie. fill in the blank--war, depression, slavery, imprisonment, gold/oil skyrocketing, dollar/stock market/real estate collapsing, etc etc) is nipping us at our heels. Yet nothing remotely terrible has really occurred economically the last two years, at least compared to the early 80s or the 1920s.

Anonymous said...

Marketwatch.

Yeah.

Right.

Clear as the nose on your face.

This is the "network" that teased and then devoted a full segment to "condoflip.com" in 2005. They had a parade of "experts" who looked down their nonses as they explained to the "little people" that there eas no bubble and now was a great time to buy.

Watching it now is more like watching CNRE (Cable News, Real Estate).

Steve the Dog

woof.

Anonymous said...

Man, I thank God every day. I own and live in a 2 Unit, $86,000.00 owed on a fixed rate 5.57% 30 year Mortgage. Fair MArket Value $160,000.00. The upstairs tenant, a tenured professor at a local university, cover most of the mortgage and taxes.

Buffalo NY may not be the most glamorous place on Earth, but it is affordable and the housing prices are connected to the reality of the rents and average local wages.

David in JAX said...

JAX/Palm Bay are the same market and are being double counted

Jacksonville and Palm Bay are about four hours apart and are completely different metro areas.

Anonymous said...

If you're so confident that housing isn't tanking, then by all means go out there and buy buy buy! Or if you're a desperate homedebtor, put your home out for the price it would have gone for a year ago. You'll not have a single showing. Not a one.

I did sell my house and for what the same homes sold for a year ago. It took 4 months but it sold. Only difference between now and 2005 was it would have sold in 4 days back then for the same price. And I was anything but despretae. I walked away with $200K+ after all closing costs, transfer taxes, etc. My mortgage payment was $1443 on the home which would have cost at least $2000 to rent. If that's desperation then I want some more of it.

I sold because I was relocating to a new city and was sad to sell since I loved the house and the area. But a great opportunity came along and I took it. Now I am renting while my home is being built and am paying more in rent than what my new mortgage will cost when taking into account the principle payback and tax deduction.

You'll call me a liar of course since I dare diagree with you. I'm a liar, the NAR is run by liars, Bernake is a liar, Greenspan is a liar, the MSM lies, everyone lies except Keith The Great and his loyal followers on HP.

Get over yourself man.

Anonymous said...

And Kieth you sound a lot angrier these days, much more snappy with those who dare disagree with you.

I suspect it is because despite your prediction of doom and gloom, UK housing is still soaring and the great crash in the US is non-existent.

Or I dunno you need to start drinking decaf, either way, you're ver irritable these days.

Anonymous said...

SF/OAK are NOT the same market as SAC. Sacramento is 2 hours north east, inland, and (for California), somewhat country.

That is like saying Albany is the same market as NY City.

Anonymous said...

I live in Florida and the denial here is still going strong. For example, since Feb '06 real estate sales in Tampa/St. Pete have declined 32% but prices have only declined 2%. People still think the 2005 demand and pricing will return any minute now.

Apparently trying to deceive Americans isn't enough for realtors anymore, they're trying to convince Europeans. I saw this in an article in a UK paper and thought it was hilarious:

"...But realtors (estate agents) in Florida insist that British buyers should not be alarmed.

Elaine Russell runs an estate agency in Boca Raton, an area popular with upmarket British buyers, and blames mortgage lenders and developers for the bubble. She says that when US interest rates fell to 4 per cent, lenders offered domestic borrowers cheap deals that many cannot afford with typical mortgage deals now at 6 per cent. Then too many flats were built 'and there's a glut in certain areas as investors put their dollars elsewhere'.

Typical of many combative US estate agents, Russell pours scorn on Britons who buy in emerging nations. She even advises checking the CIA's website before purchasing a home in any nation other than America 'as laws can change rapidly in these countries due to the regimes'. She adds: 'The climate is right for the foreign buyer to purchase more property in the US before the next swing upwards.'"

Buy in Florida because it's too dangerous to live elsewhere. Ahh ha ha ha! That stinks of desperation.

Anonymous said...

SF/OAK are NOT the same market as SAC. Sacramento is 2 hours north east, inland, and (for California), somewhat country.

That is like saying Albany is the same market as NY City.
-------------------------
Not it isn't. First off the distance between OAK and SAC is about 1.5 hrs. Between NYC and Albany it's 3 hrs plus. There are people who live in Suburban Sacramento and commute to the Bay area. It's all one big metropolis.

Anonymous said...

For all you troll house flippers, ever hear of Minicks exponential theory and how it relates to monetary policy? Thats where the US is right now - we are close to the point of no return. Demand-pull inflation is here and will only get worse. I see tons fo houses for sale. The reason the skewed stats may not show significant drops in most cities, is because all of the retards selling their homes are hoping for top dollar. Those days are gone. So those homes sit, and sit, and sit...until they get yanked off the listings and then relisted a month later at a lower price. Credit indicators show that people are spending more and using CC or other loans. The quick Bush/Fed fiasco, otherwise known as a monetary injection into the market stream worked for a while but is starting to rear its ugly head and will bite everyone in the ass.

Anonymous said...

I live in Florida and the denial here is still going strong. For example, since Feb '06 real estate sales in Tampa/St. Pete have declined 32% but prices have only declined 2%.

HUH? Only decline 2%?? But Keith said Tampa was 5% or more. See the 2nd post on this thread. You guys keep shouting crash, crash, crash yet haven't even got a clue as to what the prices are.

Anonymous said...

Bailout is coming folks. If this were 2005 it wouldn't be. But it's mid 2007 and every Democrat contender for '08 will be falling over proposing a huge bailout for the poor, poor, poor borrowers who are about to foreclose and were duped by those big bad evil capitalist banks the Democrats love to hate.

Don't pop those corks just yet renters. You will bail everyone out and on top of it keep houses beyond your reach for another 20 years.

BWA HA HA HA HA!!!

Suckers.

Anonymous said...

Anon said "I did sell my house and for what the same homes sold for a year ago. It took 4 months but it sold. Only difference between now and 2005 was it would have sold in 4 days back then for the same price. And I was anything but despretae. I walked away with $200K+ after all closing costs, transfer taxes, etc."

Congratulations Anon on your new found wealth. You're $200K richer and the person who bought your house is $200K poorer. There will be winners and there will be losers, it's just how the game works.

You won because you probably bought your house for much less several years ago, perhaps pre-bubble. The loser lost because they unwittingly bought your house near the peak of the bubble. I'm glad it wasn't me. I'm certain the loser is hoping to sell it for $200K more than they paid for it in a few years. We'll see. Perhaps you can return the favor by repurchasing the house in a few years from them and paying them $200K more than they paid you.

And the beat goes on........

Anonymous said...

if i sell this leaky roof, rotting pipes place for local prices, bought 30 years back for 70,000, i will have made 35,000 a year for every year it was held, or more than the average wage here,if i can find someone who will or can borrow the money to buy it, if!!!!! on those wages that are getting lower, amazing, that i still count the vegetables it grows

Anonymous said...

help, they are trying to starve me out

xSparta said...

I don't know where the hell the Florida numbers are comming from, but they don't paint a true picture of Florida. In my area, 34655 local prices are off about 15% on average. Waterfront and beach condos are down more than 15% from 2 years ago. Areas like JAX and Pensacola, prices are up but only slightly

Anonymous said...

Ok we need a whole new blogosphere just to get people to realize that MEDIAN PRICE is misleading and crappy statistics taking.

Median can and will go up EVEN THOUGH REAL PRICES GO DOWN. Thats why Case-Shiller graph/index is there.

Especially considering subprime loans are shut off (low price) but rich people still buy. Thus the median sales go up however those homes that are selling are great deals (only compared to 2005 prices).

SEE??? GET IT??? The NAR will base all numbers on the rosiest misleading stats. Ignore median price changes.

Anonymous said...

To the anonymous troll, the answer to all your questions is that, "It has only just begun". It will get much, much worse. And please, go out and buy as many houses with as little money down as possible, if you feel so confident.

Anonymous said...

Why on earth should the taxpayer bailout the real estate market? These people were all very happy to take the positive consequences of the bubble, so let them take the negative consequences too. I swear to god, if that happens I am just going to emigrate!

Anonymous said...

"Don't pop those corks just yet renters. You will bail everyone out"

With what? In your alternate reality we're all broke, remember?

Anonymous said...

A few greedy dreaming trolls seem to visit to spread their propaganda. Good job of countering their bs.

How does the ramen taste? Heard walmart cannot keep the shelves stocked.

Anonymous said...

Hello

Last January on Prubear and the Kitco gold refugee forum I put up some data on the demographics affecting gold. I found that using Dent's work as a guide, the age of a gold buyer in 1980 was approx. 46.75 years old. Taken from the time of gold confiscation in April 1933.

This age group is important to marketing researches because it is the time people spend the most money. That age, plus age 50.

My premise was that the gold buyer was set up during a lifelong supply restriction. Slowly the banks and govt released control of gold, and built up the demand, until viciously letting it rip when the Russians invaded Afghanistan. This was Trans world bolshevisms finest hour. That the orchestration of Soviet war could be leveraged to sell wildely expensive gold to Americans ranks as among the top achievements in the annals of trading.

My surmise was that the gold buyer was keeping his promise to his father, a buyers emotion.

My surmise with housing is the same thing. Teaming overcrowding in the small family house in 1960 + 46 = 2006 housing bust.

Same group doing the same fronting.

Anonymous said...

Hello

Last January on Prubear and the Kitco gold refugee forum I put up some data on the demographics affecting gold. I found that using Dent's work as a guide, the age of a gold buyer in 1980 was approx. 46.75 years old. Taken from the time of gold confiscation in April 1933.

This age group is important to marketing researchers because it is the time people spend the most money. That age, plus age 50.

My premise was that the gold buyer was set up during a lifelong supply restriction. Slowly the banks and govt released control of gold, and built up the demand, until viciously letting it rip when the Russians invaded Afghanistan. This was Trans world bolshevisms finest hour. That the orchestration of Soviet war could be leveraged to sell wildly expensive gold to Americans ranks among the top achievements in the annals of trading.

My surmise was that the gold buyer was keeping his promise to his father, a buyers emotion.

My surmise with housing is the same thing. Teaming overcrowding in the small family house in 1960 + 46 = 2006 housing bust.

Same group doing the same fronting.

Anonymous said...

Bailout is coming folks. If this were 2005 it wouldn't be. But it's mid 2007 and every Democrat contender for '08 will be falling over proposing a huge bailout for the poor, poor, poor borrowers who are about to foreclose and were duped by those big bad evil capitalist banks the Democrats love to hate.

Don't pop those corks just yet renters. You will bail everyone out and on top of it keep houses beyond your reach for another 20 years.

BWA HA HA HA HA!!!

Suckers.


No, your wrong. Bailout is NOT coming. The White House and others have said that the gov't will not interfer in markets. Not only that, but you are talking trillions of dollars in bailout money, where is it going to come from? Ain't going to happen. The market will be allowed to correct on its own.

Anonymous said...

Yet nothing remotely terrible has really occurred economically the last two years, at least compared to the early 80s or the 1920s.

Famous last thoughts of a deer looking into the headlights of an oncomming semi barelling down the highway at night:

"Nothing bad has happened to me yet..."

WHAMMO!!!!

Can't even make a good venison stew with what's left.

IB

Anonymous said...

Folks check this out..
http://tinyurl.com/ywbxlj

I think that all our local Newspapers are run by REIC

Anonymous said...

It was them libruls in Warshington what made us took too much money for our morgij.

That and the television preacher too his half too.

My civil rights been violated.

Anonymous said...

Shorting the lenders is as easy as shooting fish in a bucket.

Yeee hawwww!!!

Anonymous said...

Those days are gone. So those homes sit, and sit, and sit...until they get yanked off the listings and then relisted a month later at a lower price.

I actually made a point contrary to this before. There was a boom bust cycle where I lived in the 80's to early 90's where house prices jumped from 100K to 300K.

The properties which were foreclosed and siezed by the banks were sitting empty for over 10 years. The reason for this is because the banks had no incentive to reduce the prices of the homes and sell them (thereby causing all of the other houses they siezed to drop in value). At the same time, the values of the houses were still listed as an asset on the books - but since it was depreciating (sitting empty and rotting) they also got huge tax breaks from the government as an investment gone bad.

The end result - it took over 10 years for the average house price to drop by about 80K (around 220K in 2000). And I think the same will happen in the US - but it will be deeper and over a longer period of time (ie 200-300K over 20 years or 10-15K reduction in price per year. This would depend on how badly inflated the properties were to begin with).

What I see on this blog is that half of the people are saying how prices will crater while the other half is saying how they will stay the same or go up.

But we've already seen this pattern before - and the result will probably be somewhere between the two extremes.

btw - eventually those houses which were sitting empty for 10 years were torn down to build condos. The banks recouped alot of their money and even made a killing in some places.

IB

Anonymous said...

" xSparta said...

I don't know where the hell the Florida numbers are comming from, but they don't paint a true picture of Florida. In my area, 34655 local prices are off about 15% on average. Waterfront and beach condos are down more than 15% from 2 years ago. Areas like JAX and Pensacola, prices are up but only slightly"


Here is where I got my Florida numbers from:

http://tinyurl.com/2rmpgo

Anonymous said...

ya. no crap.

Anonymous said...

it's been coming for so long, and they've lied and tried to hide the truth. There are a bunch of houses in my immediate vicinity that are sitting empty, have been pulled off the market, or they are trying and failing to rent out. They can't continue to lose money on all these investment properties forever, and nobody who would want to live there can afford to buy them at a price where they would recoup their investment.

And why is it that I have to feel bad for being glad it will crash? None of these people felt bad for all this time that I haven't been able to buy because I don't want to be a sucker. Just the opposite, they were pigs about the whole thing. I'm glad it is going to crash.

Anonymous said...

yes, it was obvious, they are just lying to get in the last few suckers.

There are all kinds of houses sitting empty around here, but they can't keep losing money on them forever. Nobody can afford to rent or buy them at a price that will cover their inflated value.

And why should we feel bad for being happy it is finally crashing? No one felt bad when we decided not to be suckers and didn't get to own a house because we didn't want to pay the inflated prices. In fact they gloated then and are still trying to rub it in.

Anonymous said...

DinOR-

You're right the bubble started in the mid/late 90's as a legitimate bull market, then morphed into madness shortly after that (like within months).

Given that incomes have not risen during that time, and for many are even going DOWN, dosn't it seem reasonable to assume that in the NW we'll go back to late 90's prices?

(I assume the OR in your name is for Oregon).

sal

Anonymous said...

Foreclosures are up 100% which means prices are not going up. If prices were going up, homedebtors would be selling and taking their profit instead of getting their broke asses kicked out.

Anonymous said...

Surely Anon must be right. Houses will not only maintain their value, but will shoot up exponentially from here on. Why, in a few years, you can expect to pay $1M per square foot! Poor, idiot renters will be priced out forever, as brilliant Anon takes out a "small" loan to buy a private airport for his plane colleciton.

Anonymous said...

I totally agree with sinis on the subject of a national bailout. There might be statewide bailouts in some cases, but I just don't see a nationwide bailout happening. If there are any bailouts they will most likely be local.

Anonymous said...

KitchenStove said...
I totally agree with sinis on the subject of a national bailout. There might be statewide bailouts in some cases, but I just don't see a nationwide bailout happening. If there are any bailouts they will most likely be local.


So? Local, state, federal...the end result is the same...a bailout and no crash in prices.

And why not a federal bailout? What's another trillion dollars between friends?

Anonymous said...

Yes, but anon, when I say local bailouts I'm also saying some states will choose to go the bailout route some will not. Read between the lines there. Just like some states allow gay marriage and some do not. I think each state will try and tackle it in their own way and some will bailout dumb FB's and some will say "kiss my ass."

Anonymous said...

We keep talking about these percentages - the TRUTH is that MANY MANY homes accross the country that would have sold for the going rate only a year ago dont even have anybody showing up to look at them even when they are priced slightly below the "market" rate.

Most houses being sold these days are at auctions and only a small percentage of those houses are getting high enough bids for the banks to relinquish them.

If you put a home up for sale in most parts of the country you will LIKELY have to slash the price in order to get it sold.