‘They’re Taking Lower Offers And ‘Are Happy About It’
The Boston Globe has this update from Massachusetts. “Home prices in Massachusetts fell 3.5 percent in July, the largest decline in 13 years, as the slowdown in the real estate market finally led sellers to cut their prices. That decline was the biggest since the state’s housing market was struggling in the wake of the banking woes of the early 1990s.”
“The number of condominium units sold in July tumbled by 21.4 percent, driving prices down 4.1 percent, the biggest decrease over the course of a year since December 1998.”
“‘It’s a bad year,’ said Karl Case, a Wellesley College economics professor and housing-market specialist. ‘Demand has dropped significantly, inventory is building, prices are falling, and less income is being earned. We’ve been saying it’s going to happen for so long; it’s happening. It’s going to be painful.’”
“In Massachusetts, price declines add to the confusion among buyers afraid of overpaying, said Mark Gibbons, an agent in Stoughton. ‘There’s concern they don’t want to lose any equity if they want to sell a couple years down the road,’ he said.”
“Nancy Richards, an agent in Belmont, said sellers’ attitudes have changed noticeably from last year, when they were ’still clinging to hopes’ of selling at record prices. This year, ‘they’re taking offers that are lower and are happy about it.’”
“But Newton agent Rona Fischman said many are ’still in denial.’ The steep drop in July sales ‘tells me we’re in the first year of the price declines,’ said Fischman. ‘Sellers who really have to sell are waking up and smelling the coffee. There’s more coffee coming.’”
The Bedford Minuteman. “You can’t drive through town without seeing a ‘For Sale’ or ‘Open House’ sign and they represent a statewide trend. Housing inventories are at an all-time high and homes are staying on the market longer.”
“Patricia Gartland, a realtor in Lexington and a Bedford resident, said that even communities that have had historically robust home sales have been affected by the ongoing downward shift in the market. The number of homes for sale in Bedford has more than doubled, with 116 on the market up from 57 at this time last year, Gartland said.”
“While sales continue to sag, Gartland said she is not ready to declare that the so-called ‘bubble’ has burst. ‘I don’t subscribe to the bubble theory. I do believe there has been a correction from the crazy numbers we had been seeing for the past several years,’ said Gartland, who has been in the real estate business for six years. ‘The market tends to go in two to five-year cycles, so there could be some further correction, but there’s no need to be alarmist about it.’”
“Housing prices in Bedford have declined dramatically. According to Gartland, the average price of a home in Bedford has fallen to $633,000, down from approximately $700,000 at this time last year. Gartland said that while prices may finally start to catch up with inventory, buyers should not expect a large-scale depreciation.”
“‘We’re coming off a time when the market was really hot and sellers had no trouble getting their asking price. But thing have cooled off recently and I think sellers are starting to come around and recognize that it’s a different market. So you may see prices come down a little more,’ Gartland said.”
OT, but ABC’s Good Morning America keeps on pounding on the bursting real state market. This morning they had a segment, in which a financial contributor advised owners to ask for less than recent comps, and to take the first offer (actually these were points written in a red square, taking most of the TV screen). At one point the show host asked: “Home owners may be frightened now, what would you advise?” Financial expert: “The worst thing they can do is to have memory. Do not think that your house is worth what it was one year ago. Most home owners have enough equity to sell now at a profit, even if market is bursting”.
Blasphemy, these people should be burnt at the stick.
Today show basically did a ditto of what you just described. It’s here….the media is going off now. I expect to see a panic induced inventory spike this weekend from all the people that get there news only from television. “Honey, come and see this! Can it be true?!!!” Yep, were entering a whole new phase of this thing.
Burnt at the stick? They might be taking the stick, but I think you were thinking stake.
Wow! That would be interesting to see. I wonder if we will actually observe the herd effect in housing inventory now that the media is finally doing its job and scaring the bejeezus out of folks?!
LOL. Stick vs stake: maybe my subconscious was working on predicting some sort of rectal future for the FBs out there.
one lady who advised take the first offer is a realtor baraba cocharan or something.
the other black lady is a financial expert, president of a mutual fund or something like that.
barabra, advised buyers to buy and sellers to sell! WTF
Barbara Corcoran runs one of New York City’s largest real estate agencies. (like most of the big agencies here, not NAR-affiliated). The city would have to be in flames before BC admits prices could go down here.
Barbara Corcoran runs one of New York City’s largest real estate agencies. (like most of the big agencies here, not NAR-affiliated). The city would have to be in flames before BC admits prices could go down here.
Barbara Corcoran is a little Sandy Duncan look-alike. She is incredibly annoying. Six months ago she was on Fox News Channel’s Saturday shows saying “everybody will be buying in spring”. She is developing some real shit areas in New York City. Her developments are way overpriced. She is a shill plain and simple.
The only thing worse than hearing her talk about real estate is hearing her espouse her political views. She is the picture of mindless guilty white liberalism. She is an awful little person, with a huge bank account. She sucks!!!
On the contrary, I was listening to K-Earth 101 (socal) and the host was citing stats that California has a shortage of housing needing 4 million homes. The host also asked people to call in to report where they live and how much their houses are worth. People who called said their houses were worth basically a lot more than they paid for them. The host also gave an example of an actress who bought a condo in West Hollywood for $1.9m last year and is selling it for $2.8m (or was it $2.5m). So there is still a very strong sentiment in SoCal.
Deeper in denial, that’s all.
Bagdad Bob was doing quite well also, until he was unceremoniously removed from his chair and microphone. Just clowns yakking until the final end …….
DL-she is LISTING it for that much, not SELLING it. Huge difference.
Exactly. The listing price this year is a total joke. If I were sick enough to be buying a home right now, I would pay no attention to the listing price, but only the price that the seller paid for it. If they bought in the last 5 years, no thanks.
Robert Cote’s “Wishing Price.”
“So there is still a very strong sentiment in SoCal.”
…and they’re all about to get a heaping helping of “rude awakenings”.
This playing out so much like the early 90’s down there. (I’ve only been in NNV for the last 12 years. I was born and raised an OC boy for the first 30 years of my life.) I remember back then the market had been tanking for over a year and people were still shocked to find out that there house was worth far less than what they thought.
Oh, and someone needs to remind these folks that you can’t base price on sentiment. What was good about this mornings peice on the Today Show was that somone made the comment that your house is only worth what you can sell it for, not what you think it’s worth.
I really need to start proof reading my posts!
Dead-cat bounce time, IMO.
The mindset of ignorant homeowners does not a dead-cat-bounce make.
Is the housing market liquid enough to do a dead cat bounce? I think it moves too slowly for these kind of high frequency market dynamics to apply.
The cat hasn’t even hit the ground yet, ;et alone bounce.
“The cat hasn’t even hit the ground yet, ;et alone bounce.”
True. Nevertheless, there is nothing wrong with pricing in, to a super-lowball offer, one’s anticipation of the price a few years down the road. If you have the stomach do that often enough, and if you agree that there’s no one perfect must-have house, then it is like the guy with the timelessly tacky and blunt pick-up line — you’ll get one.
The “We buy ugly houses” people are doing just that, but in a corporate manner. The time-saver I recommend: research first when and for how much the hopeful seller bought the place, so you can estimate how far underwater they’d be. I go to the courthouse, to see the recorded liens (mortgages and HE loans) on such places. There seem to be about 13 or so states that don’t give you ready access to this information, but I’d bet a local detective agency could probably find out. There’s no free lunch — if you want to save a lot of money on a purchase before the market bottoms out, you’ve got to make unpleasant offers to people who are down on their luck and you’ve got to do some work.
“The host also gave an example of an actress who bought a condo in West Hollywood for $1.9m last year and is selling it for $2.8m (or was it $2.5m). So there is still a very strong sentiment in SoCal.”
So my reply to the host would have been “Has she sold it? Then shut your pie-hole!” When escrow closes then we’ll establish what your house was worth.
I just don’t think the average home owner understands to any depth the influences and so the likely consequences of the early part of the burst. The image of inflated prices is burned too deep; the effect of a resetting ARM are underestimated; and as I talk to locals about housing in general, most think that their house is truly different and can be sold at any time. The only question is the decision to sell - that it will sell quickly and with good profits is a given.
ot i havn´t got a responde in the older post
Comment by txchick57
2006-08-24 04:28:55
Dude’s just trying to drive traffic to his blog. Irritating. Wish you had an ignore feature on here.
Comment by jmf
2006-08-24 04:49:07
is there a problem?
i´ve no ads on my blog. there is no commercial backround.
i post the links because there a generally other links or graphics integrated in the post/blog.
often i underline the main point so that someone has not to read everything.
and after the calls from the builders etc. there is an update after the call.
maybe you can answer what the/your problem is and respond also on
the http://thehousingbubbleblog.com/?p=1311#comments
would be a pitty i´ve we can´t discuss this txchik57
Personally I don’t care if people drive traffic to other blogs (obviously this is not my blog - only my opinion). However, I think I get great information from the other blogs and I dont mind the links. EXCEPT the “ceiling fan blog” (glad he is no longer here!!)
I say that’s cool. . .esp. if he doesn’t have any ads; what’s the big deal? It’s not as if a posting is any skin off someone else’s teeth. If you don’t like it, hit the scroll button. Now if his posting was something like, “I have a house in Phoenix I’m trying to unload at cost, please see my Craig’s List ad at blah, blah, blah, well then yes, an ignore feature would be useful!
‘Sellers who really have to sell are waking up and smelling the coffee. There’s more coffee coming.’”
Bubblefucius say:
Housing comps like Folgers coffee; both good until the last drop.
Actually that was the tag line for Maxwell House coffee.
Oh no, how will my neighbor finance her next Bar Mitzvah?
Oh no, how will my neighbor finance her next Bar Mitzvah?
LOL . The next thing you will see is they will sell a car and give a house away with it as a incentive .
Unfortunately for us sitting on the sidelines hoping for a quick resolve there is memory on both sides of the market. The seller has memory of always getting a higher price, and doesn’t want to sell for less. The buyer has memory of prices always going higher, and when they preceive a price discount they jump in to buy with thoughts of instant equity and higher prices to continue anew.
The hard reality is that RE is illiquid. In boom times where greed and ignorance abound RE becomes quite fluid and sales flow with unbridled enthusiasm. In bust times things move much more slowly as only the most leveraged, over indebted, or transplanted (job relocate, divorce, etc) individuals are forced into selling. After this first round of selling the next wave of sellers now affected by lower prices will be forced into a selling position and so it will go until we reach a bottom.
As for me, I now like the position of ‘renter’ and I am in no hurry to return to the position of ‘owner’ in the near future.
Re: …seller has memory of always getting a higher price, and doesn’t want to sell for less…
I agree to a degree. I’ll use my parents as my example here. They’ve lived in their current house for nearly 30 years. Mortgage has been paid off for a while. Bought at ~$75K, current value somewhere in the $400s. If the market were to do a quick drop (let’s say 25% for the sake of the example), and their home was now valued in the $300s, they’d have no problem selling at that price. My mom herself - who’s sitting on a crapload of equity - has said she’s still shocked when she opens the real estate section and can’t find anything under $200K. So the ones who are selling ONLY for the purpose of making money will have a hard time adjusting their thinking. The ones who will profit (and still quite nicely) regardless will likely not have any issue.
LOL!
“Sellers who really have to sell are waking up and smelling the coffee. There’s more coffee coming.”
Yet another local inventory record smashed in my Essex County city yesterday, with inventory breaking the 470 barrier and moving up to 476. The inventory just doesn’t stop piling on. The crash buzz is everywhere but most sellers don’t seem to think discount pricing applies to them — their house is “different”. To you I say: wake the F up and smell the dog shit. Your excruciatingly ordinary 40 year old house, in a very middle class neighborhood, is NOT worth $450k. Massachusetts is doomed. The mentality of sellers is completely deranged. I know people trying to sell and it’s just impossible trying to get through to them. Mass. is unlike flipper infested places like California, Arizona and Florida in that most sellers have actually lived in their houses for a while, bought a bunch of tacky furniture and fittings and gotten really sentimental about the place. They will not unload at desperation prices. They are hardcore believers, equity religion zealots. They will camp in the trenches, out of ammo, starving and diseased and raise the white flag only after they’ve eaten the last rat.
Hey, Craven Moorehead (and may I add, doesn’t everyone?)
476 doesn’t sound like a very big number. What is the population there? Any price declines?
Population: 40,000.
As I alluded to, sellers are stubborn (because their houses are different) so price declines are insignificant, despite the rising inventory and plummeting optimism.
I have a difficult time understanding what is a meaningful decline. I have seen homes recently priced at, for example, $450,000 in subdvisions where comps are in the $380,000 range. If the seller cuts the price to $420,000, is that a decline? I say not, because the original price of $450,000 was delusional and not based on reality. I guess declines would really be a home the sells below the average comp for the neighborhood. And that is definitely not happening in any meaningful way, yet.
Jokers pulling houses off the MLS, resetting DOM, and then relisting for $500 less don’t count either (and I have seen this, too).
Again, most sellers in Massachusetts have an emotional investment in their property. They have lived in it for at least a few years, decorated it, partied in it, spent the dot.com aftermath days crying in it when they lost their jobs and of course, cashed out all of their equity. Massholes are hard core equity zealots, entitled to their big pay day and they will stubbornly ride their albatross into bankruptcy, divorce court and general economic oblivion. The last thing they will do is cut the price and take a loss. Dreams come at a price and this is a dream they will die for, just like the guy on the subway who doesn’t give up his wallet, and takes two in the hat all for a lousy $18 and a library card. They will not allow buyers to steal this dream.
I too am enjoying your evocative posts…there does seem to be a special …erhm…intensity…to the…erhm…individualism..in Mass lol!
Very well written, true-to-life comments. Thanks - I appreciate it.
CM-
Love your posts, man…
Between the Big Dig collapsing; the 5-game sweep by the Yanks; and Howie Carr’s show last night on the demise of real estate values, MAZZport is gonna have to put up jumper fences on the Tobin.
Those jumper fences will take six years to construct, cost 750 million and result in at least a dozen indictments. And at the end of the day, Massholes will realize it was the same chainlink fence sold at Home Depot for $12 per foot (or whatever the hell a fence costs; I don’t know, I don’t own one).
Seriously, between the rampant, in-your-face corruption and collusion between the state house and business interests, and bleeding quality jobs, and insane home prices, burgeoning welfare/immigration burden, how could this MF state not be doomed?
I am stockpiling my bunker in Essex County. It’s gonna get ugly out there.
“While sales continue to sag, Gartland said she is not ready to declare that the so-called ‘bubble’ has burst. ‘I don’t subscribe to the bubble theory. I do believe there has been a correction from the crazy numbers we had been seeing for the past several years,’ said Gartland, who has been in the real estate business for six years.”
I remember hearing that there were Japanese on remote islands years after WWII had ended who thought the war was still on. This gal is quite a bit more pathetic than that. The war is over lady!
Key part of her comment lies in the “been in the real estate business for six years.” I love it when these idiots who’ve only seen the upside of a real estate merket make predictions like they’ve seen it all.
merket?
I don’t subscribe to the bubble theory. I do believe there has been a correction from the crazy numbers we had been seeing for the past several years,’ said Gartland, who has been in the real estate business for six years.”
Well, with her six whole years of experience (count ‘em, six), it’s not a surprise that she doesn’t have a subscription to the bubble theory. But the subscription will be free soon, so she’ll be taken care of by Mr. Market.
I don’t subscribe to People magazine. Does that mean it dosen’t exist?
Good one.
Yea,
It is excruciating to read so many of these vapid and completely self-serving agents opining on the market. Entertaining though…
‘I don’t subscribe to the bubble theory. I do believe there has been a correction from the crazy numbers we had been seeing for the past several years,’
Ok Ms. Gartland, If it makes you sleep better, you can call it “Crazy Numbers” if you like.
The Warren Group has their numbers out for the July sales in MA. They get their data from the the state registry of deeds, so it includes FSBOs, not just MAR-affiliated agent sales.
http://www.boston.com/business/ticker/2006/08/july_singlefami.html
“Home prices in Massachusetts fell 3.5 percent in July, the largest decline in 13 years, as the slowdown in the real estate market finally led sellers to cut their prices. That decline was the biggest since the state’s housing market was struggling in the wake of the banking woes of the early 1990s.”
If the initial decline in this downturn is already rivaling those which occurred in the wake of a bad recession in the early 1990s, you can bet your bottom dollar that bigger declines are in store.
“So you may see prices come down a little more,’ Gartland said.”
Thanks for the happy talk, you Dumbass Bimbo! When you start eating your meals from Alpo cans you may change tune.
She is going to have to eat hers out of the bag. No good stuff for her!
Auger, You just made my morning, It’s been a while since i laughed that hard.
“‘We’re coming off a time when the market was really hot and sellers had no trouble getting their asking price. But thing have cooled off recently and I think sellers are starting to come around and recognize that it’s a different market. So you may see prices come down a little more,’ Gartland said.”
Yes, prices will only fall a little bit more, even with rising supply. It can’t go too much lower. After all, she has been a realtor for 6 years and has experienced a 5 year real estate cycle as she says….
Sounds like she has some investment property on her hands. She’s still in a state of denial.
I checked the land records, as I do the names of most Realty Clowns in Massachusetts when stories like this come across. Seems like she only owns a condo in Bedford. No adjustable rate mortgage, either, surprisingly. I suppose she could own stuff outside of Middlesex County, but I doubt it.
Wow. THat’s gotta be a whole lot more research into the background of the people providing the quotes than the reporter bothered with…
“‘We’re coming off a time when the market was really hot and sellers had no trouble getting their asking price. But thing have cooled off recently and I think sellers are starting to come around and recognize that it’s a different market. So you may see prices come down a little more,’ Gartland said.”
Yes, prices will only fall a little bit more, even with rising supply. It can’t go too much lower. After all, she has been a realtor for 6 years and has experienced a 5 year real estate cycle as she says….
Sounds like she has some investment property on her hands. She’s still in a state of denial.
Patricia Gartland, aka village idiot.
Hey watch it, she’s a six-year veteran of the real estate market.
What’s amazing about Massachusetts is that the decline didn’t begin a lot sooner. The state is losing population. Who bought the homes that came up for sale in the boom times prior to mid-2005? A net out-migration would assume more sellers than buyers and yet prices stayed up.
You are not kidding. I am just south of you in Bristol County, and there is the same kind of quiet desperation going on. THere is a house close to where I live that has been on the market since sept 05. That is almost a full year with the same realtor. They started asking 550K last year, and are now down to 475. Problem is that eve though it is a cute house, it sits right across the street from a major fish distribution warehouse, and next to a Restaurant that has been closed since last year. The assessor has it valued at 329K, but it should not go for more than 180K.
Who on earth would want to have a cook out in the middle of the summer with fish stench in your back yard, or nice grease smell from the restaurant next door? BTW, the property next to the restaurant is a known brownfield that is part of the doomed and closed plating industry.
“Gartland said that while prices may finally start to catch up with inventory, buyers should not expect a large-scale depreciation.”
Why the hell not lady? You had no problem cheerleading this up with nothing fundamental to support it. Now that the monopoly money has dried up, what’s to support those prices that are completely disconnected from incomes, job creation and migration rates.
Gartland should know, she’s been in the business a whole 6 years now!
for those watching the mass. market i have noticed that the warren group’s number for newton, one of the supposed teflon towns, is down a whopping 16 percent in median price from a year ago
Linda,
Thanks for your comment about the 16% decline in median housing prices in Newton, MA. Can you post the actual prices you referenced, particularly whether they are single family, condo, or multi-family. All three would be ideal.
As you can see from the early experiment below, we’ve been mapping homes selling for below assessed value in Newton since November 2005:
http://tinyurl.com/qpbsh
When we noticed that the same pattern was playing out in more than 25 of the most expensive cities and towns in Greater Boston, we expanded the map beyond Newton:
http://www.platial.com/realestatecafe/map/6343
We also decided to work with a mapping platform that enables anyone to post comments, add properties to an existing map, or create their own map. Check out this map of Cambridge, MA where the myth is that sales prices never decline because of the built-in demand from Harvard and MIT:
http://www.platial.com/westsidebubble
You don’t need to be a Harvard & MIT grad to recognize a falling market, so I hope other bubble bloggers begin to create their own bubble maps to aggregate the collective wisdom here and document falling housing prices in their local markets. If you do, please link it to http://www.realestatebubblemap.com
Our hope is that a national network of bubble maps would help inform and protect homebuyers from overpaying in overvalued markets. That lofty goals translates into creating an open source platform that enable anyone to pick and choice “user-posted comps” to support offers they submit well below sellers asking prices. If it can work in Massachusetts, it could be a model for other bubble bloggers and buyers around the country.
next to a fish distribution warehouse!
and a closed restaurant!
Sell it to a gang of Vietnamese immigrants[or other non-English speakers]. They’ll nail 20 cots into the basement walls.
Another term [and ethnicity] for this phenom is, Pakistani Flophouses.
“When you’re slapped, you’ll take it and like it.”
- Sam Spade
If you’re refering to Gartland, then she’ll be taking more than a slap. I expect to see her starring in her own porn movie sometime in the future entitled “Backdoor Bonanza: The Realtors Due”
“Gartland said July and August are historically slow months for home sales .”
Unlike, for instance, November or February, eh?
Must be all those six(6) years of experience talking there.
This Gartland woman is a BONEHEAD!
With this market in freefall, looks like the binge debtors may have a bit of a hangover. Hey, where’d all that equity go? “What do ya mean I have to bring a check to closing?!?!?”
Prices have dropped by almost $70K in a year, and that’s not “a large-scale depreciation”?????
What planet do these people live on? I swear….
Watched a re-run of “This Old House” last night, from 1996.
They had a 19-room Massachusetts house listed for $230K.
The people bought it for $180K, and the show then proceeded to renovate the house.
I’ll bet that house was “worth” well over $1.5M in 2005.
That is exactly why MA is going to get pumeled. In 1996, 97, 98, 99, and 2000 the Tech boom was in full swing. Mass had new start-ups every week, and new technologies. These had a direct impact in the middle class, as most engineers, and managers are part of it. Now fast forward to 2006. The dot.con bust is over and done with, but there have been very few new companies started since then. What is even worse, is that the companies that are started are the equivalent of investment ponzi schemes (Hedge funds). These typically attract large investors more than middle class employees. For each Tech engineer that lost a job in the tech boom, a job was created in the construction industry, masking raw unemployment, but creating a gigantic sub/under employment problem.
Take a middle of the road software engineer. Typical salary is around 75 to 80K, pays his taxes, he works a regular job with some overtime. Except for projects he is home tending his family, and investing in it. Now change that for the middle of the road construction worker. Average wage is around 22 to 40 depending on the trade, and if he is a contractor or employee. Most are contractors that never file taxes anyway. Works all day in a construction zone, and last thing he wants is to come home to fix anything. Side job is flipping property by buying cheap and then quickly turning around and selling. (I am not saying that engineers have not done this, but it seems more prevalent in the RE industry, either Realtwhores, or Mortgage brokers) Right now, worried, because they have all their money into the latest flip, and work has dried up. As they are contractors, they do not qualify for unemployment compensation, unless they are really smart and do the dummy corporation that pays unemployment and taxes…
That is about the situation for MA right now. Lots of very scared people that will not, and cannot lower prices, because they have too much “invested” in it!
I agree with your comment. From a personal perspective, MA is not strategically positioning itself for growth and prosperity. Why do people only think positive about increasing prices rather than more affordable prices? Over and over again we hear how MA has a home affordability problem. Now that it’s self correcting and prices are trending down it should be good news, but it’s not! People fight against affordable development in there neighborhoods, although they’re for it if it’s not in there backyard (NIMBY). A movement in home prices back to the statistical mean is at first, painful, but the best thing that could happen to MA, especially in Boston and its suburbs. High home prices that make it difficult for families and young professionals to survive because of the lack of disposable income only drive the talented and productive away. The Boston Chamber of Commerce did a study and titled it, “The Brain Drain” due to the fact that Boston keeps losing its educated citizens. Even a high earning individual such as a surgeon who can afford to buy a nice home in MA may not want to because of the exorbitant amount for something that can be had in a competitive market for half the price. This is especially true today because wages which used to be exceptionally higher in the North East just isn’t true anymore. Case in point, I have a friend who moved to NC because his wife was offered a higher wage than she was making in Boston. He also is making more money than he made in Boston and with their increased cash flow, lower cost of living and affordable housing opportunities they were able to buy a home that would have cost 150% more in Boston. I happened to be in career transition and have been interviewing with many firms in Boston over the last few months, but have yet to find anything that matches my skill set with the proper salary. I’ve actually turned down positions because the salary was too low. Now if it was 1999 I would have taken one of the positions, but it’s not and I cannot survive and take care of my family in MA unless my income is adequate. Firms in Boston are also being strangled with overhead costs and expenses that eat into their salary budgets thus giving more opportunities for other markets to compete and steal market share. Competing firms in more affordable regions will be positioned to capture more business due to the fact that having happier more sustainable employees who leave work feeling good about themselves and maybe a little richer each day translates into better attitudes and greater success for the firm and their clients. A major core competency going forward in America will be employee well being. In a knowledge based society workers are no longer using their hands doing repetitive tasks, but rather firing off rounds of knowledge built on years of education and skills development. With Social Security and pension funds becoming a dying breed, individuals need to think strategically about their careers and retirement simultaneously. To succeed as an individual or business now and in the future costs of everything is important. Individuals need to earn more (demand more), spend less and finance their own retirement. Businesses need to become more efficient, limit wasted expenses like high cost real estate or high cost markets which offer no additional benefit, be flexible and utilize low cost technologies solve problems, and with these savings pay higher wages for talented hard working individuals before they all go away.
hile sales continue to sag, Gartland said she is not ready to declare that the so-called ‘bubble’ has burst. ‘I don’t subscribe to the bubble theory. I do believe there has been a correction from the crazy numbers we had been seeing for the past several years,’ said Gartland, who has been in the real estate business for six years.
Oh, now here’s a quoteable expert…Been in the biz for 6 years…
Not a clue about the ‘90/’91 bust and the $500 billion bail-out for the
mess created by the Charles Keatings of the world.
hehehe…The reporter needs to talk to her in about another 12 months, after a tough winter of MAZZ fuel oil bills and skyrocketing property and income taxes to take care of the legions of gov employees and pensioners.
There is a definite slowdown in my town 30 miles west of Boston. There are more listings to choose from and prices are stagnant. A new listing just came on at $850k for an unfinished new house. The builder obviously ran out of money and needs to sell it ‘as is’. I haven’t seen that in awhile.
rob - which town? southborough?
harvard
I know one builder in a town west of 495 who offered an attorney free rent in a McMansion in return for 15 hours per week of legal services.
A nice idea in theory, but taxes would be a problem…
Southborough is very expensive…if you ask me
A slow motion dead cat bounce, I believe. Perhaps first-time homebuyers priced out of certain markets such as SoCal sitting on the sidelines, may soon think housing is a relative bargain if the prices are a bit lower.
So…would you say that we’ve entered a whole new paradigm?
Bagdad Bob was doing quite well also, until he was unceremoniously removed from his chair and microphone. There will be clowns yakking until the final end …….
First time poster -
First, thanks for all the information that has been provided on this blog. I often wondered how people were “affording” their homes and after reading this blog I realized I wasn’t crazy.
Just an acedote about the Mass housing market. I have a friend of a friend who is a lawyer involved in real estate transactions. He has currently branched out into “easy” divorces - there is very, very little real estate business right now!
Boston market has historically received a lot less coverage and commentary on this blog than FL, CA, NV, AZ, DC/VA and NY/NJ markets, but it is going to be the trailblazer in the downturn. Boston/MA has every single factor in the whole gamut arrayed against it. No retirees, warm climate, expanding economy, or any ‘intangibles’ for Boston. It will be a lot worse than the early 90s housing bust there.
CM-
Seriously, between the rampant, in-your-face corruption and collusion between the state house and business interests, and bleeding quality jobs, and insane home prices, burgeoning welfare/immigration burden, how could this MF state not be doomed?
Man, you got the place pegged perfectly.
I’m back in Ipswich after a 30 year haitus, takin’ care of some elderly parents for awhile.
Shoulda seen the cops harassin’ my WW II disabled vet father for a gun permit for the .22 cal rifle he had when he was a kid.
They’d throw a shite fit if they saw my AK-47 collection I got stashed in the north country.
Can’t wait to get the f*ck out again!!!!!!11