The Housing Bubble

Readers suggested a topic on dealing with the economy. “I’d be interested in hearing people’s thoughts on a ‘Plan B’ for how to cope with a changing economy. To me it seems something has profoundly/permanently changed and all the evolving and contradictory information makes it hard to formulate a (flexible but) strategic plan for going forward. Steps/plans that an average middle-class person can/should take, short of preparations for the apocalypse… It’s not that I don’t have occasional apocalyptic fears, it’s just that it’s not terribly realistic way to plan on a personal level for most of us.”

“Not sure I’d want to live in a ‘mad max’ world, but want to figure out a better way of feeling that I can have a better chance of navigating the continuing turbulence.”

A reply, “Steps/plans that an average middle-class person can.should take…”

-Stop buying
-Start walking
-Learn to sew, plant, repair, cook, re-purpose, DIY.
-Eat two meals a day instead of three
-At home
-Lose fifty pounds and take responsibility for your own health maintenance

-Dump the gashogs, make do with one vehicle
-Buy a bike
-Teach your kids to ride it
-and share a room.
-Get ready to move in with them when you “retire.”

-Don’t buy stuff that comes in packages
-Unplug half your electronics, appliances, furnishings
-Stop using plastic garbage bags–they encourage blind waste.

“Realize that you’re no better than anyone else on the planet, deserve no special entitlements just because you’re An American, got a free ride for two generations on the rest of the planet’s back, got paid three times what you were actually worth, insisted on your cynical little wars, your unfettered consumerism, and your ‘buy now-pay never’ expansionist policies.”

That’s over now.

-Stop blaming ‘The Rich,’ ‘The Poor,’ ‘The Bankers,’ ‘The Builders,’ ‘Everyone but yourself.’ (You DO vote, don’t you?) and…

-Get used to it.”

Another said, “Great response. However, if I lost 50 lbs I’d probably be in bad shape. Perhaps if I amputated a leg or two it’d be doable.”

The Duluth News Tribune. “In a survey this year by the Associated Press and LifeGoesStrong, one in four baby boomers still working said they’ll never retire. Moreover, nearly six of 10 said their workplace retirement plans, personal investments or real estate lost value during the economic crisis of the past three years. Because of that, 42 percent in that group are delaying retirement plans.”

“Malcolm Johannessen sees it a lot. ‘A lot of people have been forced to or chosen to either work later than they had planned or done some sort of hybrid with a partial retirement in trying to supplement their income with some cash income on the side,’ said Johannessen, a foreclosure prevention coordinator for Lutheran Social Service in Duluth.”

“Some people lost their jobs when they were in their 60s and lost their retirement savings as a result, said Johannessen, who estimates between 15 percent and 20 percent of his clients are baby boomers. ‘But a lot of people have also lost everything they had in their retirement when the market crashed.’”

“‘I tell people that I’ll have to work for seven years after I die,’ said Johnny Northfield, 50, of Duluth, who said he went from being in good shape to having almost nothing because of a ‘perfect storm’ financially.”

“A few years ago, Northfield figured he was in good shape for retirement. The Duluth native lived for 15 years in Florida, where for a time he benefited from a booming construction industry. He owned two businesses and was a partner in another. He owned three houses and planned to use them to finance his retirement.”

“Then in 2008 the economy went sour. A business partner died unexpectedly, and that business closed. Another business went from almost 60 employees to just Northfield. One of his sons was a drug addict who cleaned him out of $200,000, he said. His son couldn’t care for his little boys, now ages 4 and 5, so Northfield was awarded permanent guardianship. ‘I left Florida, basically with nothing, and came back to Minnesota, all because I did not want to raise these little boys in Florida,’ said Northfield, who lives in Lincoln Park.”

“But the economy was worse here than he had realized, Northfield said. Finally last summer, he got a job doing compliance audits, mostly in the Twin Cities and Brainerd. That requires being on the road about eight days a month, Northfield said. His grandsons stay with a grandmother during those times. ‘What I’m making in a month now is what I used to sometimes make in a day,’ he said. ‘I have a few thousand dollars left for retirement, which is just laughable.’”

What do you see in your housing market this weekend? Lower prices? “Australia’s much-debated property ”bubble” may not have burst but recent data shows house prices are deflating, posting their worst quarterly slump in a decade. The biggest falls were in Brisbane and Perth, down 4.6 and 3.4 per cent respectively. The quarterly decline was the largest since RP Data-Rismark began recording results in 1999.”

“Boston-area home values slid in February for the seventh consecutive month, according to data released yesterday by the S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Indices, which measure repeat home sales nationwide. Karl E. Case, a cofounder of the index and retired Wellesley College economics professor, said housing values probably fell because buyers are having a hard time getting financing or are not convinced they should buy real estate.”

“To find a metaphor for the rise and fall of the housing market in the Great Recession, look no further than the 1,500-square-foot home at 948 Grant Ave. The house the Rockford Area Association of Realtors and city are giving away next week sold for $43,000 in 1996. By February 2006, its value dropped to $33,000. A Roscoe company bought it in March 2006 for $44,500, made some improvements and sold it in 2007 for $83,000. By March 2010, the bank had foreclosed on the 1930s Dutch Colonial home. The Realtors association purchased the three-bedroom, two-story home in July from the Federal National Mortgage Association. Purchase price: $29,601.”

“Jon Krause, president of RAAR, said it’s no surprise that prices continue to fall. ‘It is going to be a couple of years before we see prices rise again because there are so many distressed properties on the market,’ he said.”

“Los Angeles County’s employment sector hit bottom in 2010 and more job losses are coming - but a recovery is under way. That was the assessment of Nancy Sidhu, chief economist with the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corp. ‘We lost 356,000 jobs in the recession,’ she said. ‘Los Angeles County unemployment is just beginning to turn around.’”

“In the housing sector, foreclosed homes have provided buyers with a lower priced alternative, she said, and builders are having to compete. ‘Home prices have come down by half,’ Sidhu said. ‘We really have a question mark about what the housing market looks like in the future.’”

“Median sales prices for homes in Houston area are below their peak of $164,500 in June 2009. It’s a buyer’s market in much of the city now, according to local real estate broker Ken Smith. Smith recently spoke with Purva Patel about the market and what price data means for buyers and sellers. Edited excerpts are below.”

“Q: How does a buyer or seller know if a house is priced right? A: Either one can get out into the market and do their own research. In general, buyers have a lot more information than sellers. I like to say sometimes buyers are smarter than sellers. That’s because buyers are out shopping and sellers are sitting around in their living room, possibly holding on to yesterday’s price in their mind…Sellers should listen to their Realtor, and if they don’t believe their Realtor, they need to think like a buyer and emotionally detach from their property and view it like a piece of inventory they’re trying to sell in the marketplace, objectively. What they paid or what they have in it, those two things don’t matter at all.”

“Q: How much further do you think prices need to fall? A: I don’t think in Houston they need to fall much more than 5 percent. When I say prices are too high, that doesn’t necessarily mean prices need to fall. It could mean buyer demand goes up…I would point out that if you look at the overall broad market in Houston, more than half of all the listings will not sell at all during the listing period because they are extremely overpriced. For the first three months of 2011, there were 10,621 home sales. During that same period of time, there were 14,199 single-family home listings that were either terminated, withdrawn or expired. There are two markets. There’s a market of houses that sell and a market of houses that don’t sell.”

“Q: What’s the price difference between the houses that sell and those that don’t? A: Enormous. And here’s why: Of the houses that sell, they sell for 96 percent of list price in a relatively short period of time. The houses that don’t sell are way overpriced. I don’t have a way to tell how much they are overpriced because they didn’t sell.”

“Q: What concerns you about the local housing market? A: One of the things concerning me in Houston is that our volume has dropped so much. It’s not clearing as well as it should. In our last recession, prices dropped significantly but the volume was hot. Something’s got to give in a bad market — either prices or volume. In California, for example their prices dropped like 70 or 80 percent. Now they’re on the upswing, and that’s because the prices got down to bargain levels and now they’re snapping up the bargains. I’m not a big fan of the government rescue programs. I think the tax credit was a bad idea, I think the mortgage rescue is a bad idea, and I think that what we’re trying to do is alleviate some pain. We could be done with this already and on the upswing if they had just let prices fall. Prices would have fallen more than they did and we’d be on our merry way. Let’s list all the foreclosures and get them out there. If the market’s so good, get them sold. Buyers want to know there’s not another shoe to drop.”

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