ping
on the bright side, those waiting for a chance to pick up inexpensive housing might just well be lucky.
We bought a home last July with the intent of staying here no more than five years.
I'm so worried that we're going to lose when we try to sell it.
Housing has little to do with the price of consumer goods, and instead is largely driven by the availability of land (supply) and the number of people who want to live there (the demand).
We aren't getting rid of anybody (the election pretty much assures that with regard to illegals), and we aren't adding any new land to our continent. So the idea that suddenly everybody is going to want to live in little tents on street corners is simply silly.
The price you can get for your house might drop, maybe as low as what it was 2 years ago, hardly a major setback in the long term given how much housing prices increased over hte past 5 years.
But anybody who is hoping for houses to be given away any time in the future is going to be sorely dissappointed.
Oh, they ARE giving away houses here in Virginia, good solid aluminum houses used on the old military base. You have to guarantee you'll remove the houses and rebuild them somewhere, and apparently it is too expensive or the housing isn't good enough.
Everybody wants 5-bedroom houses with 4-car garages.
But supposing houses will get a bit cheaper, it's hilarious that everybody cheers when you can buy a car on sale, but nobody likes a good cheap house.
http://www.statesman.com/business/content/business/stories/statesmanhomes/11/19/19compare.html
“A year ago, Phoenix was one of the hottest markets in the country, with sales and prices running at record highs. The median home price hit $263,000. But up to a quarter of the sales were to investors, who began selling their properties wholesale when it became harder to flip them for a fast profit.”
“Now, existing home sales are down 34 percent, and new-home starts are off 18 percent from last year. Phoenix remains expensive. In 2005, first-time buyers could expect to pay as much as $230,000 for a new house. These days, the figure is closer to $200,000. Some builders are piling on incentives.”
“Before the market started cooling, there were few homes valued at less than $200,000, said Ben Sage, Phoenix office director for Metrostudy, which tracks new home markets around the country. ‘As the market has been adjusting, home builders have been lowering prices,’ Sage said.”
http://money.cnn.com/2006/11/20/real_estate/summer_house_prices_cool/index.htm?postversion=2006112014
Home prices down 1.2% in third quarter
Rustbelt markets and Florida lead the decline. Sales volume plummets nearly 13%.
Prices in the Northeast, down 4.8 percent, fell the most. Prices dropped 2.6 percent in the Midwest, 0.9 percent in the West and 0.1 percent in the South.
Detroit market, buffeted by auto industry layoffs, suffered the largest loss; prices there plummeted 10.5 percent, to a median of $154,100.
Other rustbelt areas with drops included Canton, Ohio (down 9.2 percent to $112,300), Akron (down 8.4 percent to $118,200) and Bloomington, Illinois (down 8.5 percent to $156,300).
Three Florida metro areas were hit hard by price drops. In Sarasota, the median home now sells for $320,700, off a whopping 9.4 percent from last year; Palm Bay/Melbourne/Titusville prices sank 9 percent to $193,600; and Cape Coral prices plunged 8 percent to $255,400.
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Even more dramatic than the price drops was the fall in the number of sales. Nationally, the total numbers for sales of existing single family homes, condos and co-ops went down 12.7 percent compared with the third quarter of 2005. The decline was off the charts in Nevada, down 38 percent. Arizona, ( - 36 percent), Florida (- 34.2 percent), California (- 28.6 percent), Hawaii (- 25.8 percent) and Virginia (- 24.4 percent) also experienced steep drops.