[Garvin]

Prices in Eastern, North Carolina have doubled in six years due the the infestation of "Half Backs" (Northerners that move to Florida then move half way back up the coast)in our once quite area.

[crz]

A developers plan to slash prices=He simply added over 200 grand onto the cost of building the thing when they got done building.

There are developers here that added over 100% on the top of their new home construction and are now sitting on well over 1500 homes. I hope they go belly up.

Look here..it cost around 95 to 100 dollars a sq foot to put up a house. So do the math.

[Bernard]

The people who got caught in this probably have 98% Debt to Purchase Price mortgages, and may have used their Google stock to secure the loan.

[bray]

Beginning to look like a great opportunity to buy??

Pray for W and Our Troops

[N3WBI3]

I'm not a fan of the whole 'real estate is going to collapse' bandwagon but certainly there are many areas where it is overpriced.

My wife and I two years ago were faced with a choice we had a baby six months way and we did not want to live in an apartment. On the same side we had been married a little more than half a year so we did not have what I would consider a large enough down payment for a nice house.

We found a condo conversion project in a great school district and a great neighborhood the only problem was it was a rather urban block of four unit apartments all owned by different people in a suburban neighborhood. The circle bound by the houses is infamous in the city, we took the chance and bought the first one for 115,000 we put another 25k into it (central air / new heater, hardwood floors, whole new kitchen, whole new bathroom, and a ton of little stuff) anded up with a rather nice 1k sq ft condo for about 1K a month with association fees.

The neighborhood was still pretty rough but it is turning a second building has went condo and three more are in the process of converting in the next six months. The last unit sold for 155 (about 18 months after we purchased ours) and even the non upgraded units with carpet 1980's kitchens / bathrooms / fixtures / no AC are going for 125.

Meanwhile I know people who have bought a 400K house only to see one sold a few weeks later go for 25% less. The twin cities will not collapse the way many state but it is correcting. The trick is to do what you do when the stock market corrects look for the bargains, look for the diamonds in the rough (and thats not McMansions in new developments)

[savedbygrace]

Many years ago, I lived in the D. C. area. We used to refer to rapidly rising real estate prices there as 'a bunch o' white folks cheatin' one another'.

Today, the white folks aren't alone.

[Esther Ruth]

What's going to happen to property taxes when the value of so many homes begins to go down? Will they go down? The brand new big schools, teacher's salaries, fancy libraries, 6 lane roads through all these new communities etc are all based on the property taxes they would receive based on the over-priced homes.

[Obadiah]

Okay, I read the article and I'm sorry, but I simply do not understand.

The couple in this story and their neighbors hired an attorney who said that the builder charged prices that were too high based upon faulty appraisals. Is that correct? Um, excuse me, but where is the buyer's responsibility? Did they walk into the builder's sales office, sign the papers for an $870,000 home, and do absolutely no comparison shopping or any research whatsoever??

It seems to me that buying a home for most people is serious matter that requires careful research. No way you sign away nearly a million dollars and not have any idea what the surrounding housing market is, what the fine print says, and how you might reasonably be able to deal with at least a modicum of adversity?

Sheesh. I feel bad for these people. I think they are going to learn a hard lesson, but I suspect they got caught and blinded in the buying frenzy and did not give proper or adequate consideration to reality.

[2banana]

Eventually, he'll be responsible for making full payments of $6,000 a month, he said, adding, "I don't know how we'll be able to pay that."

That is alot of money, per month, for 30 years for an average house...

[finnman69]

its not just Orange County

[Gritty]

A lot of young people want to buy a house because they "don't want to lose money" paying rent, and as "everybody" knows, real property always appreciates. Also, bandwagons pull away quickly.

In a bubble market (like this one) you can easily loose a lot more than just the rent money, especially financing with weird mortgages which "save" you big money or taking out home equity loans for that super vacation to France and the new SUV in the driveway!

Am I be the first to claim it's all George Bush's and the GOP's fault? By the time this is all over, it will be if it isn't already!

[finnman69]

GARDEN GROVE – David Dunn felt as if Christmas were stolen from him when prices for neighboring homes in his new subdivision fell by about $140,000. Now, he says, his home is worth less than he owes, making it next to impossible to refinance before his $3,000-a-month payment doubles. Eleven neighbors who bought before the price cuts are in the same boat. "They put us in a bad financial situation by lowering the price," said Dunn, 33. "Some of (the buyers) did 100 percent financing, so they're completely over their head right now."

Ohhh, it's everyone else's fault YOU bought an overpriced stucco box with little or no money down, and with financing that was neither affordable nor wise.

[RockinRight]

Neighbors in a new Garden Grove tract say a developer's plan to slash prices by about $140,000 has left them owing more for their homes than they're now worth.

Meanwhile, in the South and Midwest, the same home would only cost $140,000 TOTAL in the first place.

[-YYZ-]

The developer isn't hosing them by lowering prices on new homes in their neighbourhood, they hosed themselves by buying overpriced homes that they could barely afford. Cry me a freaking river.

[jetson]

Currency not worth a damn, our government letting illegals pour in and overrun our neighborhoods with excess cars and people living in garages, illegals sucking up valuable jobs and real estate prices falling. This is the SH*TS. Thank you federal government for not protecting our borders and regulating currency.

[wtc911]

The smart buyer is not the one who jumps at the reduced pricing schemes but the one who waits until those who are over-extended walk away.

[Melas]

No tears here. America started going astray when the general public ceased thinking of houses as places to live and started thinking of them as investments.

[Larry Lucido]

Am I missing something? Prices are ultimately set by buyers (no willing buyers, no high prices). These buyers drove the prices up by their own bids, and they now complain that they overpaid????????????????????????

Beam be back up, Scotty.

[AD from SpringBay]

No personal responsibility bump. It's nobody's fault - nothing ever is. It's those doggone falling prices that trap people. No one ever traps themselves. Quick - where's FEMA? We need some mamma-guv'mint debit cards!

[jimfree]

Nope, there was no bubble. Continuous double digit appreciation is a natural thing to expect forever.