It always cracks me up that some called me a doom and gloomer because of my comments in 2007 that Seattle home prices could fall as much as a whopping 20% and that the problem was international. To this day those same people tell me that my predictions don’t come true, and yet house prices dropped more than 30% in Seattle and nobody had heard of PIIGS back then.
If you are not prepared for WWIII you are in for a world of hurt. Heck, even if you are, it will not be pleasant.
I remember those days. Those of us who predicted double-digit price drops on housing prices were called all manner of named.
In truth, we under-estimated the depth of the housing fall.
What people calling for a “bottom” in housing still won’t admit is that we’re about to see a prolonged depression in housing prices due to demographic issues with the Boomers selling off their homes, down-sizing and shedding second homes, etc. We’re over-supplied in some areas on some types of housing (eg, condo’s in resort-like areas) for decades to come.
Funny — it was common knowledge among my colleagues that we were in the midst of an out and out period of mass insanity wrt housing prices and that a crash was imminent and inevitable.