‘Appreciation Has Changed’
The Anacortes American reports from Washington. “With fewer buyers and more homes for sale, the housing market on the island is slowing down. Overall home sales were down 27 percent in Anacortes from January through July. But for buyers looking in Anacortes, that’s not entirely bad news.”
“‘We’re starting to see a ton of inventory so people have a choice and they’re taking time to make those choices,’ said broker Nate Scott.”
“As the island heads to a normal market, some sellers still have the pricing expectations of last year. With more homes for sale and fewer buyers, some sellers are having to reduce their prices. ‘We’re seeing as many price reductions as new homes on the market,’ he said.”
“Scott said there are high expectations on the sellers’ part but appreciation has changed. Sellers expect bidding wars like they had last year, which just isn’t happening.”
“‘The market is spent, Oppel said. There was a lot of activity the past two years and a lot of people who wanted to buy something have.”
“High-end homes are what’s hot. People are selling their homes in other areas, like California and Seattle, and they still see Anacortes as a bargain, Oppel said. ‘They’ve got the ability to pay more,’ he said.”
“Some people in the state are having to sell their homes or deal with foreclosures because of adjustable rate mortgages, Scott said. Esther Spence-Crabb, Anacortes Mortgage loan officer, said some buyers who opted to go with an interest-only loan are running into trouble because they bought more house than they can afford, she said.”
The Bend Weekly from Oregon. “Bob Wienk, a local real estate broker, says while people in the area have watched the prices appreciate greatly over recent years; the cost of living is still appealing to many. ‘We still look like a bargain to people coming from California, Washington State or the Portland, Eugene and Salem areas,’ he added.”
“However, Wienk says people need to pay attention to the third quarter results. ‘They will be very interesting,’ he said. ‘Since the end of June, things have cooled off.’”
“‘I have seen more decreases in the prices of homes for sale that are listed,’ he said. ‘I just tracked the month of August for curiosity sake and there are about 1,700-plus price decreases of the listed properties.’”
“It is a trend that is happening all across the nation. ‘Interest rates have gone up and speculators have gotten out of the market,’ Wienk said. Wienk thinks that may be one reason Bend is seeing more of a supply of houses for sale. ‘A recent survey done by a local company of homes currently for sale found that 50 percent of those homes are non-owner occupied and 30 percent of those homes are out-of-state owners,’ he said.”
“The majority of those homes, he believes, are owned by the so-called speculators. ‘The market here was going up so fast people were making money very fast by reselling, but that party is sort of over,’ Wienk said.”
“The majority of those homes, he believes, are owned by the so-called speculators. ‘The market here was going up so fast people were making money very fast by reselling, but that party is sort of over,’ Wienk said.”
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No National Bubble?!?! So the party ended in every part of the country at the same time?!?!
- “‘I have seen more decreases in the prices of homes for sale that are listed,’ he said. ‘I just tracked the month of August for curiosity sake and there are about 1,700-plus price decreases of the listed properties.’
Let’s figure this out … when you add in the ‘LIE’ factor that 1700 is probably closer to 3400 decreases in price.
no crispy, not true.
we learned yesterday that the party in jackson hole will never end.
we’re you ditching class again?
LOL!!
i will be in bend fall river all week fishing at my parents place.i will report back next week.it is very nice there but no jobs to speak of.great place to retire w a pension.my 77 yo father just cut down a 80 ft pine in front of his house so i guess i will be a lumberjack next week.
Friend of mine is now an “out of state owner”. He’s changed jobs, moved out of state, and yet he can’t sell his old hosue for the dream price he wants! So he’s “keeping it”. Yep, that’s got to cost a pretty penny to keep up a nice, big, empty house.
The funny thing is, I heard someone at the new location saying what a clever fellow he is! They said he’s really smart because he got there and said it’s *not* the time to buy. Oh man! I’ve been trying to drill that into the numbskull’s head for a whole damned year, while he shopped desperately for a new house — and the only reason he didn’t buy one is because he couldn’t get rid of the old one!!
And sure enough, he says now that he always knew it was better to rent. Yeah, right. I wish I had tape recordings.
So yeah, now I can sympathise with the rest of you who said that all the people who looked at you last year like you were a tin-foil-hat housing-bubble-idiot last year and now this year say that they knew this all along… ARGGHHHH!!!!
Whopops, sorry for all the bad grammar. I was just annoyed, really annoyed, and typing fast. ARRGGHHHH!!
Yeah, well get used to hearing about how all these economists/investment guru’s/homebuilder CEO’s and the rest of that ilk “knew all along” that fundamentals were out of whack, blah, blah blah. Of course all the real estate retards (no offense to the mentally impaired) will think this is all a big revelation and aren’t those guys SOOOO smart for figuring this out so fast, etc. What a country!
Plus you can expect a million idiots claiming they all sold right at the top for maximum dollars. I’ve seen a few of them on this board over the past 15 months or so. Yeah right. They all sold their Yahoo at 300 too and their QCOM at 1000. Amazing with such perfection in their investing acumen and timing they have bothered to honor the rest of us peons with their royal presence. Maybe Warren Buffett forgot their weekly poker date and the CEO of Goldman Sachs lost their phone number. Bleh.
I got out of the stock market within a month or two of the top of the tech run-up. I wanted to get out a year earlier, but laziness, greed, and yes, Bob Brinker, had me stay in a bit more. More blind luck than anything.
If I get back into housing within a year of the 15-year bottom, I’ll be happy…but also surprised.
I think most people who sold RE in the last 15 months sold damn near the top - what’s the sour grapes all about?
Well, if that friend of mine has sold his house in Atlanta late last year, as he almooooost did (rejecting a contingency offer that the buyer’s sell their own house first), then he’d perhaps be able to legitimately claim he bailed out at the top. Never mind that his timing would have been accidental, as many top-of-the-market sales are.
Oh wait, but had he sold that place, he was ready and rarin’ to plop down money on a brand new to-be-constructed McMansion 40 miles away from his new job!! So he’d have sold at the top alright.. and bought right back in again at the top (as did many tech stock holders). Doh!!
Sold in June of 2005 ….. dumb ass luck (yeah). I’m OK with that.
Sort of like drawing 2 aces in Texas Hold’um ….. uh, yes ma’am, I’ll take another free beer while I watch the rest of this unfold ……
“Appreciation changed” when will these guys stop abusing words?
Dictionary - An increase or rise in the value of property, goods, etc.
What does the word appreciation mean now?
Washington State Realtors talk as if they are immune to the housing bubble(especially Eastern Washington) The true way to track realtor fear and suffering—realtors leaving the profession. Any anecdotal evidence?
Realtors never realistically or depict problems in the real estate market. They adore terms like “slide” or “softening” or “correction.” Most realtors wouldn’t admit to a crash if their lives depended on it.
Their (professional) lives pretty much do depend on it. Most of them probably have “investment” property bought with I/O ARMs too.
“It is a trend that is happening all across the nation. ‘Interest rates have gone up and speculators have gotten out of the market,’ Wienk said.
Speculators have gotten out of the market?????
They’re not out, they’re trapped like rats in a cage. They are in denial and loaded up with multiple units they are trying to rent and “wait out this short downturn”
Now they are INVESTORS. Sorry flippers. Game over
You got that right. A huge percentage of the realtors bought into this market mania literally. I cannot wait to watch them fry. They helped as much as any single group to drive up prices while they basked in the wealth so it will be extremely satisfying to watch them deteriorate along with the market.
I can’t believe realtors “Bought into it”. It’s more like they were willing conspirators, telling buyers anything they wanted to here. Of course, with 1.5 realtors for every listing in California (it’s something like that), many people think they can make a quick easy buck turning houses….
Most realtors wouldn’t admit to a crash if their lives depended on it.
Soon it won’t matter, because it’ll be so friggin obvious.
….sort of over.” Wanker said….
My new boss can’t sell her old house. And hubby won’t relocate to her new location until they sell it. Wonder how long she’ll be my new boss?
Or available???
There’s a big catch-22 a-comin’. If people lose their jobs, many will have to relocate to find work. But if they can’t sell their house to move to the new area, then what?
‘If people lose their jobs, many will have to relocate to find work. But if they can’t sell their house to move to the new area, then what?’
This is exactly what made the Texas bust get worse and worse.
The will become LANDLORDS.
Here is an article from the TAMPA BAY Online issue today:
http://www.tbo.com/life/MGBX3FPUURE.html
It is about becoming a landlord when you can’t sell your POS.
If they lower their price it will sell…and help with the comps!
I know a ton of people in similar situations, but its usually retirement.
And now they’re wondering what to do since they cannot sell they’re overpriced bubble home and they deserve every penny for their retirement…
Greed turns today’s pigs into tomorrow’s bacon. (I know, borrowed, but I *love the line*.)
ditto.
“Appreciation Has Changed”
Would that be to “depreciation” ?
Since when is an asset which is reducing in value still said to be “appreciating”? The word needs to be banned from use with regards to the current housing market. That was two years ago!
Pete said:”Their (professional) lives pretty much do depend on it. Most of them probably have “investment” property bought with I/O ARMs too”.
Very true. A realtor/mortgage broker team showing a house 3 doors up from us two weeks ago told us they were going to buy another rental to add to their “investments”. They believe the prices now are just a “dip” and will continue going up.
Dips, like in the stockmarket?? LOL.
pets.com 2000 anyone?
You should go look at the borrower listings on Prosper. They fall into three categories. A virtual compendium of the FB’s out there these days:
1. The ones who want to borrow to “invest in real estate”
2. The ones who are maxed out on credit card debt, have bad credit and are begging for yet another fix to “get out of debt” by taking on more debt.
3. The ones who want to spend an obscene amount of money on their weddings (with a 50%+ divorce rate in this country). These ones are usually young.
It makes you wonder if there is ANY financial education taking place in this country at all.
sure there’s a financial education. it’s real simple: “nothing costs anything; there’s just monthly payments until you drop. if you die before you’ve paid your debts, you win.”
I like it, a new twist on the old bumper sticker:
“He who dies with the most debt wins”
best explanation for credit I’ve heard!
3. The ones who want to spend an obscene amount of money on their weddings (with a 50%+ divorce rate in this country). These ones are usually young.
Completely off-topic for a second.
When I hit 200#, I joined weight watchers. (I was the only man in the class, but the program worked, and I quickly and sensibly got down to my “recommended” weight of 170 in a few months.)
Anyway, about 1/2 the people in Weight Watchers are women who are about to get married and want to lose weight to fit into a too-small dress that they already comitted to.
I think the same gluttony–with hope for a quick fix at the end–that made them gain weight and want to lose it fast is a similar psychology to the “borrow and then borrow to cover the debt” psychology.
Many of the people at WW have trouble losing weight. Why? They CHEAT! It’s a simple calorie counting game. Stay below a certain number and you WILL lose weight.
It’s EXACTLY like sticking to a budget!
And I changed my name from “Robert” to רְאוּבֵן (my actual name in Hebrew) because I wanted to avoid confusion with the esteemed (and entertaining) Robert Cote. (Not that anyone would confuse my blather with his insight!)
Indefinitely, I’m not posting at thehousingbubbleblog. Didn’t everyone get the memo?
I think quite a few of them will be getting an education starting right about now!
Furbar said:”My new boss can’t sell her old house. And hubby won’t relocate to her new location until they sell it. Wonder how long she’ll be my new boss”?
I wonder how long she will have a husband.
Furbar said:”My new boss…….
how about if we call her boss “f.u.b.a.r.”
furbar and fubar - what a team
Weinking, all right… About Bend:
“We still look like a bargain to people coming from California, Washington State or the Portland, Eugene and Salem areas,” he added.
That’s a crock!!! Bend is MORE expensive than Portland, Eugene, or Salem… and there’s little work besides HOME CONSTRUCTION or minimum-wage service jobs.
Folks in Bend still think they’re immune somehow. Pass the Kool-Aid, willya?
I am so tired of the old “compared to California” BS. What, are people going to commute from Bend to CA? This kind of crap is nonsense. Maybe a cup of ice water to the face followed by an open hand slap would bring them out of their delusional state.
The “we’re cheap compared to CA.” thing is losing steam as we speak.
The Seattle median is now only about 75K cheaper than San Diego. (per Benengebreth anyway).
Same thing with the Anacourtes vs. Seattle thing or Bellingham vs. Seattle. Those 2 towns have run their prices up so fast and furious that the “savings” any Seattleite would make by moving there is becoming completely negligble for a comparable property.
And it’s a hell of a long commute.
Hard to imagine a LOT of people will SD for Seattle just to save 75K, and counting (downward).
If you’re planning to retire to some of these nice rural places in WA you may have to travel a long way for medical care. Many rural and small town doctors are NOT accepting new Medicare patients.
Happening in Upstate too.
and 1700 price reductions? 1700 houses just about covers all the SFH homes in the original Bend before you add in the latest developments out in the sagebrush.
There are 3000 on the market there per Realtor.com (in an area of 100,000?), so only 1300 to go until they’re all reduced. So there you go.
There are 3000 on the market there per Realtor.com (in an area of 100,000?), so only 1300 to go until they’re all reduced. So there you go.
All I see is a national mental depression. So many cities. So many towns. So many people throughout the country are so screwed.
Not in my area of LA. Sellers still wearing party hats demanding more cake.
The sugar high of children played out in the lives of adults. Jump so high and run so fast!
Foreclosures are up 400% in Maine.
http://www.wcsh6.com/news/article.aspx?storyid=41286
the spin will be…”but in absolute numbers terms, the number of homes in foreclosure is still relatively small, blah, blah, blah”
even if that were true, it still points to a trend and is an indicator that if the marketplace was “strong” then the debtor could sell rather than be foreclosed upon….
Breaking news - The median price of homes sold in northern Virginia (Fairfax, Arlington, Alexandria, and Falls Church) plunged a whopping 8.1% year over year in August.
The latest numbers are available for all to see at mris.com/reports/stats.
VA_investor -
Looks like you are losing $$$$. Better get that HELOC checkbook out!!!
Is the boss lady that can’t sell her house and about to lose her husband attractive, or not?
But, according to In The Bag Gary, there will still be great demand due to rich baby boomers, rich immigrants having bigger and bigger families, that will have the ability to pay higher and higher prices. He said we would look back 5 yrs, and think that it was low right now. Are you telling me that Gary is WRONG???? Oh my GOODNESS
They didn’t buy more homes then they could afford, they bought overpriced homes with deceptive loans.
Wow! Both my home towns listed in the latest blog! I lived just south of Anacortes on Whidbey Island and I’m now living in Bend, OR.
Txchick, I didn’t sell at the top but pretty close and now I’m renting in Bend paying 895 for a very nice place that suits my life style just fine. I travel a lot and follow this bubble very closely and I can attest to the fact that Bend is absolutely ridiculous. Probably a full 20% of the population is involved in construction, realestate or related industries. The rest are service industry employees or retired or work for the small businesses here. But it’s different here. I would be willing to bet that probably half the sales of the last 18 months were speculators. And check out the inventory numbers, now over 2100 homes listed on MLS and another 400 plus FSBO. This is in a town of 75000. That is one house for every 30 man/woman/child for sale. And on top of all that 200 of those houses are over a million bucks!
Peter G. - where is this?
WArenter-Maryland
Bend is a weird, artificial culture. I gave some talks out there last year to physicians; over drinks they lamented how their wives were all depressed. The commute from SunRiver and other developments into town (remember, this is Bend, not L.A.) was so long that they just hung out in their cars in town and napped some afternoons waiting to pick up the kids at school, instead of going back home. Sounds like a happy happy joy joy resort community to me….
OT-Just as a matter of interest, my daughter is going to buy a house. She is using a RE agent who is a friend. He told me that he just had a settlement where the seller had to bring $50,000 to the settlement table. OH how the tide has turned in just a few short months.
Hmm… how did I do that? Peter G. - see above!
I’ve got some military friends heading back to Anacortes Nov 1st. They had a rental house all set up but the owner called them this week to say he isnt going to rent to them. He says his real estate agent (the house is also for sale) told him that there will be a huge influx of buyers Oct 1st due to the new fiscal year and increased PCS (permanent change of station) money. I can only imagine the conversation that went on between the real estate agent and the owner. How foolish of the owner not to take a guaranteed renter for 2 years! By the way, the owner bought a bigger house in Anacortes and the one for sale/rent has been empty for 2 months.
Navygator-
That’s pretty funny news.
Please report back on that post October 1 influx of new buyers and let us know how that’s going for them in Anacortes.
Did some research on the Oct 1st influx and apparently only 3800 of the 75000 moves were affected. Also if you have kids and they need to start school you could get around this. That 3800 is nationwide so I guess Whidbey Island wont be “saved”. Here is the link
http://www.military.com/MilitaryReport/0,12914,91265,00.html
You’ve gotta know that the Fed and Republicans are trying their best to delay the doomsday bubble scenario that has been set up — until after the November elections. After that, it’ll be a whole new ballgame.
Yeah, just about the same time the market fizzles in the PacNW will be about the same time the six months of clouds and rain come. I’ve read of Californians coming up here for a few years and then calling the same movers to move them out. 300+ days of sunshine verus half that? It will be interesting, but just as well. I bought near the market top, but have assumed a very modest lifestyle.
And I won’t even mention jobs (or lack thereof). Most people have more than one to make ends meet.
B’hamster-
How refreshingto hear from someone who bought at the top and is waiting for the crash instead of opting for hysterical “It’s different here!!!” commentary.
I’m guessing you bought a home to live in rather than a house for future money extaction.
Here’s wishing you a peaceful and fulfilling life in your new home.
Thanks. Yes, the house in in our price range and at the lower end of the market. Who cares what the housing market does. We are a 30-yr fixed, and sold one of the two cars (although we both bought new city bikes), and I guess you could say we’re hunkering down for the economy of 2007 and beyond.