Posted on 03/08/2009 2:04:07 PM PDT by FocusNexus
The "For Sale" signs are just starting to sprout, but already experts worry that this spring home-buying season in the United States will be even grimmer than the last.
Despite tentative signs of recovery in hard-hit areas like California and Florida, the broader housing market is far from hitting bottom, economists said. Across much of America, prices are likely to keep falling through 2010.
So the March-to-June season, when most homes are bought and sold, will be bad this year - perhaps the worst since the market began to spiral down in 2006.
Across the nation, 19 million houses and apartments - nearly one in every seven - are vacant, the highest percentage since the 1960s. But only about six million of those homes are for sale or for rent. That means millions more could still flood onto the market, depressing prices further.
For would-be sellers, the bad news keeps coming. Last week, one new report showed that one in nine mortgages was delinquent or in foreclosure, while another showed that January contract signings for sales of existing homes fell at their fastest pace in two years.
(Excerpt) Read more at iht.com ...
I’ve bought 2 homes in as many weeks. The market seems to be working just fine for me.
If you have a situation where leading politicians talk about a economic catastrophe that we might never get out of, a cautious and responsible person would naturally be a bit wary of committing to such a large purchase- even if things are going fine personally for him.
Last week simeone came back to see my house for a second time and today a young couple showed a lot of interest. Now I have to keep my fingers crossed and hope they don’t offer half of what I am asking. I sit and wait.
Until then, buyers won't touch them any more than they will touch a rattlesnake.
Foolish sellers that bought at Bubble prices and are now "upside down" want the buyers to be Greater Fools and they are keeping the prices above pre-Bubble levels but the buyers today know a rattlesnake from a kitten and they aren't about to pet those rattlesnakes.
In some places the housing market was starting to bottom and turn around, but with the limitation on the deductability of mortgage interest, the market could keep on going down.
Good luck with selling your house, if you have some interested buyers, you are lucky. Hope you will sell your house close to what you are asking forit.
Good for you, I'm thinking about it. Think housing is near the bottom yet?
I'd be surprised if you didn't get some "insult" type offers.
Around here, home prices are just as high as they were.
“Good for you, I’m thinking about it. Think housing is near the bottom yet?”
First off all markets correct below their trend line. Second, you’ll know the bottom is near when the average home can be comfortably purchased by the average salary for the area. Till then, expect housing to continue to fall especially if the homes prices in your area haven’t dropped at least 50% from their all time high
I’ve bought 2 homes in as many weeks.
Good for you, I’m thinking about it. Think housing is near the bottom yet?
Try 2012. The market is and will continue to go down. Buying now just guarantees that you’ll be a knife catcher, the next wave starts 2nd quarter this year.
Correction: housing has to be within 2 to 2.5 times annual
income, anything higher and you won’t fit within the 31/36%
rule. If local median income is 50k, then the most the median can afford is $125k home with a fixed 6% 30 year loan.
Mrs. is a broker, she’s been very busy lately...
It ain’t the buying that’s grim, it’s the selling.
We have 1 in escrow, 2 in counters and working half a dozen prospects all buyers. The buyers are out and they have a lot to chose from.
Where are you around?
THIS IS THE NEW YORK TIMES THEREFORE IT’S CRAP AND SHOULD BE REMOVED FROM THIS WEBSITE! IF WE DON’T READ IT WE DON’T HAVE TO THINK ABOUT IT OR DISCUSS IT!
:) Just joining the FR Ostrich Brigade
I don’t know how things are generally here, think it has affected McMansions and condos, market glutted with them B4 the recession. I live in an older neighborhood in a very desirable part of town. Third house down, cute little bungalow, sold in less than a week, which has always been usual, don’t know if they took a hit on the price. Some people want these older homes in nice neighborhoods with better school. Only one house failed to sell in my neighborhood because the asking price was way too high. I don’t think the full impact has hit my area yet. If every third house were for sale due to repo like some areas I’ve seen, it would be quite a different matter.
"Affordable", of course, does not mean the prices return to reality, it means finding new and unethical ways of loaning vast amounts of money to everyone who is within megaphone distance of being qualified so they can afford to pay those inflated prices and in so doing prop up the system of selling mortgage-backed securities to pension funds and foreign governments around the world.
In particular, commercial real estate prices returning to reality will make everybody's 401K go down another 40%, on top of the headline-making stock declines. Those were the "safe" fixed income investments you were told about.
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