1984 was the last economic dip in this region. It’s been boom cycle ever since but we may be about to enter another down cycle and it might be permanent. Right now nobody is selling and nobody is buying. 1994 was crazy and that is when prices started to take off. Don’t know about five years ago but that wasn’t a low by any measure.
I've heard that about EVERY boom and bust for the last 35 years. Real estate WILL go back up; it always does. Folks want to own their own homes, and will buy, when they're ready. Folks who want to sell, will do it at a time that they perceive as the most advantageous for their financial situation. If they're not forced to sell because of personal reasons, they're likely to stay put until they see the prices going back up. Seems wise to me.
And this region is... Madagascar? It really helps to keep us informed if you state which region you are referring to when you talk about home sales. What city/county are you referring to?
Thanks.
Sorry, I forgot to add that I don’t think the down cycle in housing will be permanent. There is no such thing as a permanent bust in a capitalist economy. As long as their is demand for a given supply of homes, they will continue to be driven by our wacky economic boom/bust cycles, but no, it won’t be permanently down.
Not as long as people want to live in good neighborhoods, put their kids in good schools, be close to work, etc. There will ALWAYS be demand.
We just went through a SuperSized upswing and we are due for a SuperSized downsizing on the bust end of things. But it will end and we’ll live to boom again.
I remember the housing bust in Sacramento in 1990. ALL of my friends said, “we will never see a rise in home prices like that again.” I just laughed. 20 years later, the young kids at work are just starting to say the same thing. I’m laughing.
Look for the next housing housing boom around 2015.
Somebody correct me if I am wrong. I am given to believe, there has NEVER been any 15-year period when home prices didn’t double in California. Can’t speak for the rest of the nation, but that seems to indicate there is alway another boom, unless you are in a dying city like Detroit.
Anyway, homes have always gone up with inflation, so the longer they flat-line, the higher the boom has to be to make up for that. That’s what I thought I was seeing in 2000-2002, but then it just shot up toward the moon and I started to realize that, like the dot.com bubble before it, housing was being propped up by “funny money” that was soon going to leak out and deflate the market.
By 2006 it was pretty obvious what the funny money was — CDOs and SIVs and ARMs and NINJAs. Sorry, assets you rent just can’t go up faster than salaries. Not over the long term.