It's amazing to watch the collective conscious change right in front of our eyes. Here's some quotes from last night's CBS lead report on the housing crash underway:
"Prices are down 8% in Florida, 5% in California, and outside DC, nearly 4%. Prices are slipping in other cities too ..."
"Rather than reduce the price, which builders hate to do, they're offering automobiles, televisions, trips, they'll pay part of the closing costs" - David Lereah quote
"At this point sellers are willing to try anything, anything but lower the sales price... many of these sellers seem to be in denial"
"It could get worse... it could do even lower"
August 24, 2006
CBS News lead story last night: Housing Market Cools - "Once hot markets now seem frozen"
Yahoo Finance housing poll: "Existing home sales fell in July to the lowest level in 2 1/2 years. What next?"
Vote at http://finance.yahoo.com/, scroll down to the bottom right hand corner. Current results:
Housing will weaken further 75%
Housing will stabilize 21%
Housing will improve 5%
21851 Votes to date
Someone's got some 'splainin' to do
"Sellers in many areas of the country are pricing to reflect current market realities" - David Lereah, after yet another horrific housing report, August 23, 2006
"Far from a real estate “bubble,” what we are experiencing today is a phenomenon that takes place only once every other generation: a long-term real estate market expansion" - David Lereah, in "Are You Missing the Real Estate Boom" - February 2005
"I refuse to answer the question on Fifth Amendment grounds" - David Lereah, at the 2008 Housing Bubble Congressional Hearings, February 2008?
Shockingly honest language from Dallas Fed President: "This is the roughest, most sudden correction we have ever seen in the housing market"
Richard Fisher, President of the Dallas Fed, had this to say the other day. I am so reminded of Cisco's fate in 2001 - where John Chambers, their CEO, had built all this capacity, and the whoosh! the bottom fell out of the telecom market almost overnight.
The key area of concern in the real estate markets is the housing market. You know the facts here, so I’ll make this brief by repeating what a friend who has been a major homebuilder since 1973 recently told me: “This is the roughest, most sudden correction we have ever seen in the housing market.”
But in making monetary policy for the nation, this provides scant comfort for the Federal Reserve. Nationwide, single-family permits are down 26 percent from the peak last September.
We are well aware that consumption drives 70 percent of the nation’s economic growth and that a significant slug of the purchasing power of consumers has in the last few years been greatly enhanced by refinancing their mortgages in a rising-price market.
August 23, 2006
I've got a feeling we'll be hearing something very interesting very soon from this nut - he was too quiet yesterday.
I think he might say he has the bomb. Now THAT would be interesting, wouldn't it?
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