Posted on 03/23/2011 7:25:12 AM PDT by library user
Exactly! What we really need to see to make sense of this info is what are the total home sales (of all types) and vacancy rates, and how do those figures compare to the past few years.
Perhaps. Maybe just a funky dance and a few boxes of ammo would do it?
Yeah. I can't look at some people without wanting to scream at them.
People with Obama stickers on the car I do scream at. They can't hear me but it feels good.
why would anyone buy a new home at full retail price, when the housing market is up to 50% foreclosures and short sales in most areas?
Realtor friend here last summer pointed out that new development homes costing $600K were selling resale for $400K or less
Yes! Why are the banks doing this with the Zombie/shadow properties?
Obviously it isn’t good to be at record lows.
But looking at the broader picture, given that almost nobody “breaks” a house (and if you rebuild a house that is broken, it doesn’t count as a “new home sale”), if our population isn’t growing as fast, and more people than ever own homes, wouldn’t we expect that at some point, new home sales would in fact drop to much lower numbers?
I mean, won’t we saturate the market at some point? It’s not like cars, where we throw out old ones and buy new ones. Theoretically, we could reach a point where there are NO ‘new homes’ sold under the definition, since everybody who wants a home will already have one, and the number of births will equal the number of deaths so everybody will be able to move up using existing homes.
Same problem with measuring sales of existing homes — theoretically, you could have times when everybody is happy with where they live, and nobody wants to move, so nobody sells their existing homes.
Isn’t the simple problem that housing prices were a bubble? It’s great when you own a home and it’s value doubles or triples. But those starting out can’t afford a decent home.
My parents built a 3 bedroom brick house in the 196o’s in a good neighborhood in NJ for $18,000.
IMHO lots of the economy around us is a bubble, right down to designer shirts for $98. Made worse by government programs, now government inflation.
why give someone taxpayer money to spend $300K on a new house they can buy a similar reasle house for $150K on the open market?
art of the problems with housing (commercial properties next boot to drop) is the govt socila architetcts keep tinkering with the system instead of just letting the wound burst open, drain, and then heal (ie, let prices be dictated by supply and demand)
If they want to do away with the mortgage interest deduction, then just do it and let the chips fall
It may take another generation to change how people accept downsizing and how to allocate their money left after taxes for housing, so let’s let the democrats do it already
Yes, that is crazy talk.
We're just now getting back to per-bubble levels in many regions, and that is a Good Thing.
There should be no tax credits for buying up one asset type (homes) any more than for buying up any other asset type (stocks, gold, oil).
The housing market needs many years of benign neglect from the government so that home prices can be brought back into their fundamental relationships with incomes and rents.
art of the problems with housing (commercial properties next boot to drop) is the govt social architects keep tinkering with the system instead of just letting the wound burst open, drain, and then heal (ie, let prices be dictated by supply and demand)
If they want to do away with the mortgage interest deduction, then just do it and let the chips fall
It may take another generation to change how people accept downsizing and how to allocate their money left after taxes for housing, so let's let the democrats do it already
“Im ... uh ... Im gonna blame the weather. Yeah! Thats the ticket!”
Uh, don’t you mean Global Warming? That’s what’s causing the housing collapse, right? It must be: that’s what’s causing everything else that’s bad (except for the dwindling number of things being blamed on Bush).
“I like to think of it as the Frank/Dodd legacy.”
At first I thought you said the “Frank/Dodd Agency”, as in a real estate firm specializing in unloading foreclosures. :)
This was made possible through cheap loans and cheaper imported construction labor.
The solution may simply be to begin DISPOSING of surplus houses ~ e.g. Most of Detroit would be a good start.
Clarification: Tax credit for EXISTING homes not NEW homes
Here in Indiana most all our building contractors have went out of business. Most of them were long time family owned firms, too.
Here in Indiana most all our building contractors have went out of business. Most of them were long time family owned firms, too.
That is some recovery
That is probably true.
Here’s my (personal) question:
We didn’t overbuy, in fact when we purchased, our home was listed $35k UNDER most comparables in our area. We also bought about half what the bank said we were “approved” for.
We also made a small down payment but could have done more.
Yet, we’re STILL about ~$30k upside down at this point (bought 04/2008).
So what would my family do? (as well as those FAR worse off)
In that scenario we’re looking at an eventual value less than half our mortgage balance.
1. Stay here until we die, accept that we’ll never leave this liberal hellhole of a state, or spend all our cash to pay down a mortgage on an asset worth much less than the loan to MAYBE move in 10 - 14 years...
2. Walk away, and trash our credit, making future employment in my field (financial industry) difficult since banks and financial companies don’t like to hire people who’ve been foreclosed, especially voluntarily...
3. Hope that hyperinflation kicks in, increases our nominal home value, enables us to sell and pay loan off, but have the rest of our cash worthless.
The USA has plenty of houses of already.
For the last decade or more, we have not had enough people to live in them all (demographics). But we did have enough (easy) money to buy them.
Now - we still don’t have enough people for the amount of housing out there, nor do we have enough money either.
Real-estate will be down for at least a generation.
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