[ex-Texan]

Helpful charts, graphs and other information are posted my FR Page

[Crooked Constituent]

The real estate market was due for a correction.

Here in southeastern Wisconsin, things have tightened up but property values continue to rise, albiet slower than previous years.

[A message]

Gee, how many poential buyers in South Florida are saying, " Hmm,I wonder, after shelling out $600,000, whether my house will still be standing after the next hurricane."

[razoroccam]

"Bruce, a telecom manager in Los Angeles, walked away from two deals in Port St. Lucie earlier this year. He had flipped half-a-dozen properties from L.A. to Arizona, making from US$75,000 to close to US$200,000 on each."

Lets say he made $125,000 per house on average. For six houses, he made $750,000. Even if he lost his deposit over two (article says $1,000 per house), he is still ahead by more than half a million. Not bad.

[Swordfished]

has anybody bought a condo/loft in downtown Los Angeles?

i'm compelled to but i need much more education about financing and real estate values.

presently about 10,000 units are in development downtown, renovations and new construction. the downtown is sketchy in some areas, but seems like it has nothing to do but appreciate as a result of all the new development and influx of professionals.

i'm only considering a unit in an old building. the new stuff feels very cheap and domestic, as opposed to the historic and raw of the old (real lofts).

[MonroeDNA]

ex-texan is the willie green of housing.

It must really suck to be around him. Pessimism bleeds all over everyone.

I live in Fort Lauderdale, and my house is worth more than double what I paid for it 4 years ago.

Miami sucks, period. Dade County, corruption, traffic, signs in spanish. Nobody wants to live there.

But north,in Broward Co., it's different. I have people literally knocking on my door asking me if I want to sell.

1000 people a day move to Florida.

Willie Green, I mean ex-texan, can bleed pesimism all day. What a loser.

[Bubba_Leroy]

The big difference between the real estate market and the stock market is that housing supply and demand varies tremendously based on location. The price of an identical house can cost you $100K in one part of the country and $1M in another. The price of a share of Exxon stock is the same everywhere.

Consequently, I do not see a national real estate bust, just as there has never been a national real estate boon. At any point in time since WWII you can point to places that are having a real estate boom and other places that are having a real estate bust.

[JasonC]

"An estimated 25% to 50% of all U.S. jobs have been connected to the housing industry in recent years"

Um, nonsense. I think it meant to say "net new jobs". Construction is $550 billion a year, all real estate (including sales, rental, etc) is $1,375 billion. That's about 4% and 10% of the economy, respectively.

[Wilhelm Tell]

This property "flipping" reminds me of the day trading craze just before the dot com bubble burst. The difference is that overvalued property is still worth something while imaginary companies are worth nothing. Still, a lot of people have "flipped" themselves into property they will have to sell at a loss.

[dakine]

Cereal...

[dennisw]

Check out this excellent PDF file from this month's Harper's Mag. "Illustrated guide to the coming housing collapse"

Takes a few seconds to load. Is 4mb size.


http://www.shloky.com/files/housing%20boom.pdf

[Porterville]

So angry, so strident, so incapable of understanding....

[Herakles]

"People are mentally spooked and the argument is: 'Why does the Fed have to continue to beat it to destroy it?' " he says. "I don't get it."

Because of all the funny money the treasury (by way of the REPUBLICAN congress - yea, it's hard for me to believe too) is printing, not to mention all the money we are borrowing from the Chinese to fuel this expansion.

This all reminds me of something that happened a couple of years ago, but the people complaining then were the grandmothers et. al. who were margined to the eyeballs in the stock market.

Money is a scarce resource, not a freebie!