Replies

Thanks for the resource (Zillow.com). I went there and looked at my house and neighborhood. You did very well in the sale of your house. I couldn’t see how to bring up a time-phased graph of my housing price. How did you do that? Or did you do that on your own.

The housing trouble was becoming apparent in early 2008

“Wrong, WRONG, WRONG. A stupid statement like that throws doubt on the whole article.

Anybody who was paying attention to the run up housing prices and refi's, and the kinds of loans being written, saw it coming 2-3 years earlier.”

There has been a lot of talk of housing bubbles for a long time. I considered them to be regional issues since some areas were largely unaffected for a long time. Where I am, I became aware of both housing appreciation and overbuilding in 2008. A lot of this was due to my city’s anticipating new employment due to the base realignment and closure act (BRAC), but some was doubtless due to influences that applied nationwide.

Please note the author’s first three sentences:
I think I have it figured out, roughly. And I'm ready to assign blame. If my narrative is not exactly true, it is a hypothesis that appears to fit the facts.

He is going for a big picture and realizes that some of the lesser elements could be argued, or even might be mistaken. I think you should look for the positive elements of his article. He is trying to develop a valid summary.

His summary is certainly better that the Democrat’s summary of “it’s all Bush’s fault.” Laughable as that is, it can stick. Democrats still blame the entirety of the great depression on Herbert Hoover. My best counter, developed only recently, is that six years into the new deal, the unemployment rate was 19%. No blame to FDR after six years?

Type in your address on Zillow (you already did that) and you see the satellite map view of your house with the calculated price in the "cartoon balloon". Then click on your address in the balloon and it will take you to a follow on screen. Scroll down and you'll see 1,5, and 10 year graphs.

I claim no great economic genius for myself. All I saw was people whose incomes were no more than $60-$70000 bidding up house prices in my neighborhood to close to half a mil.

Nobody can pay eight times their income for a house, not for very long anyway. I knew it was time to get out, and I could probably buy my house back for 65% of what I sold it for, if it wasn't that I believe there's more price drops ahead.

His summary is certainly better that the Democrat’s summary of “it’s all Bush’s fault.”

The commonly held view on FR that it's all Clinton, Dodd and Frank's fault is only minimally more accurate.