The News Is “All About The Housing Slowdown”
The Journal Online reports from Wisconsin. “The secret to Wisconsin’s soft landing from the 2000 to 2005 U.S. housing boom? Caution, said Marquette University economist David Clark, whose company has a contract to analyze Realtor data. ‘California, Washington, D.C., Virginia and Florida, where they had active new construction with quite a bit of speculative building, those are the ones more likely to see price reductions now,’ he said.”
“It grates on Badger State realty agents that consumers here seem as alarmed as those in high-flying states. ‘People are reading the news, people are watching the news, and it’s all about the housing slowdown. You hear it enough and you think the sky is falling,’ said Scott M. Heyerdahl, chairman of Greater Milwaukee Association of Realtors.”
“What’s lost in the hype, Heyerdahl said, is that despite ballooning inventory and slipping sales, metro Milwaukee’s market remains strong.”
“Milwaukee County’s median price rose 2.6% to $162,900. But median price slipped 2.2% to $253,100 in neighboring Waukesha County, however, home to the state’s highest prices. North Woods territory took a price hit, Vilas County by 8%, Sawyer County by 6.4% and the Ashland/Bayfield area by 5.1%.”
The Wisconsin State Journal. “In Dane County, existing home sales plunged 18 percent to 1,991, down from 2,427 during the same quarter last year. The report is the latest indicator of a shrinking real estate market and is consistent with a sharp drop in housing starts reported over the past several months.”
“The county’s deeper decline may be because the market was hotter than other parts of the state during the real estate boom, said John Deininger of the Realtors Association of South Central Wisconsin. ‘I think we’ve just had more inventory,’ he said. ‘We’ve had more houses being built because there has been a bigger demand here in the past.’”
“‘This is the first time I’ve ever seen a slowdown in the face of low interest rates,’ (realtor) David Stark said. ‘I think buyers started to get very skittish based on the national reports.’”
The Gazette Extra from Wisconsin. “Rock County joined a nationwide housing market slowdown during the third quarter, but there’s no local real estate bubble to burst, according to Julie Raese, president of Rock Green Realtors Association.”
“It depends more on the price ranges, because in Janesville there’s a ‘pretty big’ inventory on higher-end homes, she said ‘What it causes us to do is do a better job on pricing,’ she said. ‘There’s just a bit more inventory and more too choose from.’”
The Detroit Free Press from Michigan. “Metro Detroit homeowners were hit harder than the rest of the nation in the third quarter. The median price of a single-family home in the area, termed Detroit-Warren-Livonia, fell 10.5% in the third quarter, falling to $154,100. In the same quarter a year ago, the median sales price was $172,100.”
“In Grand Rapids, the median price fell 2.9% to $136,600 and in Lansing-East Lansing, the price fell 6.2% to $139,800.”
“‘And for sellers, it’s almost a nightmare,’ says (realtor) Mark Hull in Detroit. ‘A property can be marketed with every kind of tool you can think of, and unless there are really, really great incentives that make the property 20% below what the market price should be, they’re just sitting there.’”
From ABC Local 12 in Michigan. “Real estate agent John Cunningham says more than one-third of the home sales pending right now in Genesee County are in foreclosure. He’s personally handing 43 homes that are in the process of foreclosure. ‘Buyers have a misconception that people are going to have to pay what somebody owed on the house,’ Cunningham said. ‘People are owing on this house over $190,000. Now the home’s for sale for $149,900.’”
“The downside for sellers is that the rest of the market is competing with all those foreclosed homes and that’s pushing down prices. ‘Trying to sell and move out is bleak,’ Cunningham said.”
“Banks are getting very aggressive offering great deals. The inventory is sky high: more than 7,100 homes are for sale in Genesee County alone.”
The Herald News from Illinois. “Third-quarter sales of existing homes were down 19.4 percent in Will County, down 13.7 percent in Grundy County, and down 12.3 percent in Kendall County. In Illinois, sales were down 14.7 percent statewide and 18 percent in the Chicago region.”
“Robert Zoretich, president of the Illinois Association of Realtors, said the housing market is stabilizing, noting, ‘Sellers are offering competitive pricing in line with current market conditions.’”
“The statewide median price dropped 0.5 percent to $209,000. The Grundy County median price was $190,000, down 2.4 percent. In Kendall County, the median price was down 4 percent at $237,000. The Chicago metropolitan region registered a 0.8 percent increase in the median price for single-family homes at $252,000.”
‘Brown County has felt the nationwide slump. But homebuilders say Northeastern Wisconsin has avoided the boom and bust swings that hit other parts of the country. ‘We have seen a slowdown in the industry, but not as bad as California and Florida,’ said Mark Bootz, president of the Brown County Home Builders Association. The local industry is adjusting to an excess supply of homes.’
‘What we see is an opportunity for people to buy up inventory,’ Bootz said. ‘With interest rates low and lumber prices down, it’s a good time to build. People can afford to buy.’
‘Lumber prices, which account for half the cost of a home, are the lowest in years, Atkins said. Relatively low interest rates and stabilized land costs also make this a good time to build, he said.
Lumber prices, which account for half the cost of a home, are the lowest in years, Atkins said. Relatively low interest rates and stabilized land costs also make this a good time to build, he said
GOOD TIME TO BUILD!!
Exactly what many predicted on this blog. The builders can still make profit and they will continue to build after unloading the existing iventory.
Good news for me, as builders build many more and sell at a lower price and (still at profit) prices fall faster as flippers get foreclosed.
I’d love to have a thread on this topic. I’ve pretty much decided to build, maybe next year (2007). I’d like to talk about how to know when is the time to build, what kind of house to build, finding an architect and a builder, etc. etc. I have been looking at designs and pretty much know what I want. Modern but laid-back. Extremely easy to clean. Complete with “pet room” and basement.
I like the idea of designing for cleaning. In my opinion, homes designed to be cleaned by automation will sell well in the future. Ok, I love my Roomba… Vacuum two or three times a week with no effort. Well, I do have to empty the bin… but otherwise its pick up the remote and push “clean.”
This means a design without as many steps, etc. Maybe even a single floor… Wait a second… as the population ages I’ve been reading demand is shifting towards single floors anyway… Hmmm…
And yes, its only going to get cheaper. Starting in the summer, it will be easier.
Neil
Look into the green building movement. Typical results are 10-25% increased cost in return for radically lowered service expenses for the lifespan of the structure. The return on investment is hard to pass up when you look closely at the numbers.
If you want to know what to build, talk to your local code enforcement officer. They are a wealth of knowledge and more than willing to discuss anything.
However, if you work in the logging industry like many in northeastern Wisconsin, you may lose your job if lumber prices keep going down. Then how will you buy that house?
“‘This is the first time I’ve ever seen a slowdown in the face of low interest rates,’ ”
This IMHO is the main thing, I cannot recall over the last 36 years when interest rates for 30 year fixed mortgages have stayed under 7% for over 3 years. If these Realtors looked at the number of relatively high paying jobs had been lost in Wisconsin over the last 8 years and replaced with $7 -10/hr jobs, they would understand why there is so much inventory. Its affordability Stupid!
my father is from northern wisconsin.its nice country but brutally cold in the winter.
“‘And for sellers, it’s almost a nightmare,’ says (realtor) Mark Hull in Detroit. ‘A property can be marketed with every kind of tool you can think of, and unless there are really, really great incentives that make the property 20% below what the market price should be, they’re just sitting there.’”
Here’s why realtors need some basic economic education, so they’ll stop giving their clients bad advice. The market price of a home, any home, is the price that it can sell for. The price a buyer is willing to pay. If a house sells for 20% less than what the market price “should be”, than the 20% less figure is actually the market price. “Should be” is nonsensical. It is an economically retarded statement. Here’s what people (and journalists) are going to have to understand about realtors — if they are qualified to do anything, it is to show you a house. Not to educate you about the economic fundamentals in the housing market.
Good point. Realtors should only exist to show you the property and answer any questions about its features. They, along with sellers need to understand the basic concept that the market (buyers) set prices. If anything, prices “should be” much lower than present, but we can thank fools like this realtor and ignorant buyers for the ridiculous run up. What the price “should be?” I suggest this realtor sh!t in one hand and wish in the other, and see which one fills up first.
“The market price of a home, any home, is the price that it can sell for. The price a buyer is willing to pay.”
Absolutely!!
Market value is NOT:
The assessed value for tax purposes
How much you paid for your home
How much you owe for your home
How much you put into your home, monetarily and/or emotionally
How much cash you need from your home
The sales price of your neighbor’s home
The appraised value of your home when you refinanced last year…..
Market value also is not :
Groups of speculators in a frenzy buying
Groups of unqualified buyers buying who can’t afford the payment within a year or two
Groups of crooks inflating value to take the money and run ,
A inflated value to cover incentives is not market value
A sales price with a cash or car kickback etc. is not market value .
A liar loan that has a speculator instead of a owner-occupied buyer is short term market value not long term market value
A zero down loan program demand does not necessary establish stable market value but rather attracts people who have nothing to lose ,(and they will pay higher prices than what the market usually would bear .)
Good Job!!!
Right… Realtor education requirement… What is the education level requirement to become a realtor? HS perhaps? And the public trusts realtors’ to perform complex market analysis. Some in the realtor group are blinder than the economiss they rely on for market, economic, and other environmental analyses. No wonder readers of this blog are in awe by what realtors say.
Right: realtors need to provide an actual service, and not spin on the state of the market. Most likely they’re peeved by the news because it’s no longer working in their favor. Intelligent people can see right through their agenda, so they need to cut the cr*p.
Beautiful.
Should be” is nonsensical. It is an economically retarded statement.
The standard language of economics doesn’t exactly help, either.
Terms like correction, efficiency, fundamentals, etc. all imply that there is some “correct” way the market should behave. I find this notion unhelpful and misleading.
Agree there is no way the market “should” behave. However, there is perhaps an appropriate price for a home, viz., a price that makes it possible to buy a house and rent it out without taking an immediate loss. Rents in turn are somewhat limited by incomes, though sticky like everything else.
True enough. I’m just quibbling about terminology, really, but misleading terminology can easily lead to public ignorance. I would prefer saying something like “reversion to mean” or “return to historical baseline” instead of “market correction”.
Not a good time to build if you don’t build affordable homes . How often will the builder take advantage of the lower building costs and pocket those savings rather than lower prices for people ?
Look at how slapped together the new homes are already .
I remember going to a new home tract in 2005 and seeing that you had to pay extra for a fireplace , extra for decent kitchen counters ,extra for good carpeting , extra for med- end bathroom counters etc. etc.
I remember looking at model homes in 2003 and being fairly impressed. Then I went into a new home purchased by a friend without the upgrades.
It was a sheetrock box. Big, but a box.
True story. Went to Home Depot about a year ago for some bee killer spray. Started talking to the saleswoman in that aisle about housing. She knew what she was talking about because her father was/is at time of discussion a plumber. Anyway, she told me that her father liked to tour model homes in the IE. Her parents already owned outright in Montclair or Upland after decades of living in the same house. Anyway, her father is in one of those 1M McMansions in the upstairs with this young couple. They are seriously considering destroying their economic future by buying this PoS when her father quietly readhes under the master bathroom sink and just pulls out with one hand the entire “plastic” piping. She says he did that as a favor to the couple so they wouldn’t waste a million on fixing the crap after just a few years. The young couple couldn’t get out of the house fast enough. She added that her father’s home still has all the copper piping after several decades and it hasn’ required nearly the upkeep these new fangled boxes require.
I get pissed when I hear about RE agents getting their feathers fuffled when the news comes out that housing sales have slowed. They blame the media and fail to look at the logic behind the reports. You stupid idiots. People aren’t buying because the prices are too high. How hard is this for them to comprehend?
I can almost understand the (very thin) logic from the other side. “Last year people were buying high-priced houses in East Nowhere. This year they aren’t. What changed? Must be the doom-and-gloom housing slowdown reports from the national media keeping buyers out.”
I understand that affordability is the key issue, but how does it happen that buyers suddenly say, “House prices are too high! The mania can’t go on! We’re not buying!”
What is the best way to refute the idea that the national bubble attention caused the slowdown in “non-bubble” areas?
Thing is, there was no national attention earlier this year, but houses still weren’t moving anymore. The only places you even heard of a slowdown or crash were on blogs such as this one.
Even in non-bubble areas, all the news of rising house prices during the last few years caused people to expect more for their houses, driving prices up.
I think that nationally and perhaps internationally, we reached a limit where the 1st time buyers became priced out of the market. With no 1st time buyers, people could no longer move up. Also, HB’s were building McMansions, mainly aimed at flippers, rather than building affordable housing aimed at 1st time buyers.
IMO, this national attention the housing bubble is getting is barely having any affect yet. It’s going to get much, much worse.
Why do you need to refute the idea?
Because too many people think something’s true if they read it in the paper or an “expert” (Realtor) says it. And “let ‘em burn” doesn’t cut it when it’s a friend or family member.
Good luck. Fortunately, no one asks for my opinion and I usually feel very little compulsion to offer it unsolicited.
There is no simple way to refute the idea–a “scientific” way would be go through 30 major newspapers and chart “positive” and “negative” articles and track those trends with home sales–what came first, the articles? Or the news?
The common sense answer is that prices got too high, and the first time buyers reached their tipping point, which coincided with the selling season that the most speculators were trying to unload their properties. The question that I find is most effective in getting across the “high price” idea is “would you buy your house today for what you claim it is worth?”
“‘Buyers have a misconception that people are going to have to pay what somebody owed on the house,’ Cunningham said. ‘People are owing on this house over $190,000. Now the home’s for sale for $149,900.’”
Oh my!
But the thing is, in the coastal markets you can multiply those numbers by 5. Taking a 40K haircut sucks, but you work through it. Taking a 200K haircut (or more) doesn’t just suck. It sticks a fork in you, spits on you, and buries you. BK, divorce, etc. etc. owwweeee.
That’s why my wife and I never went there. No sale, no haircut.
“The downside for sellers is that the rest of the market is competing with all those foreclosed homes and that’s pushing down prices. ‘Trying to sell and move out is bleak,’ Cunningham said.”
Floridians beware; this is your future. Sell now OR prepare to hold on for a loooonnnnng time.
That’s a great point. If folks in these high flying areas think prices and sales are down now, wait until there are defaults left and right in the same neigborhood. From the ABC link:
‘One house on Sandalwood Drive is for sale and in foreclosure. Two doors down it’s the same story. Rather than make the house payment, the homeowners let their bank take possession. It’s a phenomenon facing a lot of local homes.’
That point was made in the first story about Florida. It’s still too expensive to live there even though most FBs who bought recently would tell you they’re dying . . .
Ah but Ben - the Wall Street Journal polled 49 Economissed and by a 2 to 1 margin they agreed that the worst is over in the housing market. How many times does an economiss have to be wrong before people stop going to them for their opinions? If what I have read over the last 10 years in any indicator, I guess these guys get about 1000 shots or more at being wrong before people will stop listening to them. Bring back Hammurabi, I think he could handle these advisers.
how many “economist” are hooked to NAR, NAHB etc……?
That’s not the right question … The right question is, “How many economists would still need to work as economists if they could correctly anticipate future events?”
Speculation by many on this blog has been that a lot of people are going to walk either forcibly or by choice. I tend to agree.
If the bulk of your net worth is tied up in the house, there really isn’t much else to go after. Retirement accounts are generally untouchable in BK I believe. Sell all the junk that you bought. What else do most people have? It appears as though shi**y credit doesn’t matter anyway. So what else is there to lose, really, except your pride?
Can people just walk away from their mortgages? What if they have other money? Can’t the bank make them pay?
Here in Oregon, if memory serves, a first-time buyer can use jingle mail to send back the keys, with no deficiency collected. If, however, they refinance, then it’s presumed they knew what they were doing (in the eyes of the law, at least) and they ARE responsible for the deficiency.
Calif too
I think the same will be true for many areas in California. A lot of people here are hoping for a rebound in Spring 07, but the downward pressure is going to come from many directions: worker exodus, the economy, inventory, builder surplus, foreclosures and tax liens to name a few.
Gonna be interesting when everyone floods the market in spring hoping for this rebound… Maybe it’ll get interesting and competing Realtors will start taking down each others’ open house signs?
“What’s lost in the hype, Heyerdahl said, is that despite ballooning inventory and slipping sales, metro Milwaukee’s market remains strong.”
“Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you like the show?”
LOL!
Besides that, how was you stay in Dallas Mr. Kennedy?
Or should I say Mrs. Kennedy?
You should have kept quiet and left well enough alone.
report from SF, nothing is selling, the same houses have been on the market for almost a year, price drops nothing. New sellers still list houses at last years prices and are surprised when no one calls. On my canal street alone there are 7 houses for sale, 4 for rent and several empty.
My sense from SF is that things have finally STARTED to turn. I live in Ingleside Terrace / Heights (SW section of SF). Up til a few months ago, homes were still selling rather briskly for close to asking. Anectodotally, it appears that home sales have slowed considerably in the last 2-3 months. Sellers are still grudgingly holding out for peak / near peak prices for homes for now. IMHO, we are still quite a ways from any major fire sales in the SF Bay Area though unfortunately. I guess that I have to be content to rent a nice home for less than 50% of what it would cost to “own”.
There are so many priceless gems in here, where do I even start?
“People are reading the news, people are watching the news, and it’s all about the housing slowdown. You hear it enough and you think the sky is falling,’ said Scott M. Heyerdahl, chairman of Greater Milwaukee Association of Realtors.”
I find it amazing that these guys are describing precisely what a bursting bubble looks like, and yet refuse to call it that.
‘I think we’ve just had more inventory,’ he said. ‘We’ve had more houses being built because there has been a bigger demand here in the past.’
No… If you had bigger demand, you wouldn’t have inventory sitting on the market.
‘And for sellers, it’s almost a nightmare,’ says (realtor) Mark Hull in Detroit. ‘A property can be marketed with every kind of tool you can think of, and unless there are really, really great incentives that make the property 20% below what the market price should be, they’re just sitting there.’
How can a middleman to a market transaction be so obtuse? How deluded do you have to be to say, “Nobody is buying at the market price. Everybody wants to buy below market price. Why doesn’t the market want to buy at market price?”
(realtor) Mark Hull in Detroit: Lifetime Member, Housing Bubble Blog Wall of Shame.
If the NAR gives a Brainiac of the Year award, you know it’s going to Mark Hull.
LOL! Love it phillygal - my cubefarm neighbors are wondering what the h*ll is so funny…
I am going to call it like I see it — ’some’ and by all means not all realtors are just too fri&&in dumb to understand what’s occuring in their local markets. They are NOT academically equipped to conduct independent environmental market analysis. Instead, they blindly rely and repeat HQs description of reality. As a result, they will suffer the consequences.
Well if nobody is buying, than there is no market. But it only takes a few desprate sellers to create a market.
I guess places in the mid-west where the economy is actually in the sh_tHole don’t figure into DL’s national percentage prediction calculus. Look at the evidence right before your eyes. He said the ‘hot boom’ markets ‘alone’ will experience price declines yet the mid-west is falling apart. Look at the friggin price declines in Lansing, Detroit, and Grand Rapids.
Most cities in the “Great Lakes” region of the country fall into one of two categories- either heavy manufacturing oriented (Cleveland, Detroit, Flint, Ft. Wayne, Toledo. etc) or service oriented (Indy, Columbus, Chicago, Cincy, Buffalo, Syracuse,etc). A few are successfully transitioning (Pitt, Mpls, St. Louis?), but most are firmly stuck in one category or the other.
The manufacturing cities have been dying for the past decade. They have, for practicle purposes, no economic pulse. The service cities have been holding on OK, but with the exception of Chicago & Mpls, have not been flurishing. I guess DL can conviently discard the dead zones. However, the remaining cities have started to fall (ahead of the coasts in many cases?) so I don’t know what DL is talking about.
ooppss.. Buffalo and Syracuse fall into the heavy mfg cities, not the service cities. Even though they are in NY state (Erie, PA also in that list), they behave much more like Great Lakes cities.
The secret to Wisconsin’s soft landing from the 2000 to 2005 U.S. housing boom? Caution, said Marquette University economist David Clark, whose company has a contract to analyze Realtor data.
Ok everybody, on cue: “It’s different here.”
Between LOW Wages and HIGH Taxes, any Potential Wisconsin Buyer is having Second thought of BUYING a Home and then RENTING IT then from the State. Wisconsin Owners and Real Estate Agents have Milked the Existing Life OUT of these 50-100 yr old OVER-Priced “Qaint & Old CHARMING Wrecks” for Decades and Nobody is Interested in Mortgaging their LIVES to Buy some Crappy McMansion to Support WISCONSIN GOV’T WASTE for the Next 30 Years. I HOPE they ALL SLOWLY STARVE !
With you!
Frankfort - Illinois - Most starter homes(3 bd 1 bth) in this area are listed at 210K or above, and aren’t selling very fast, if at all. One listed for 189K last week and sold in 5 days. Imagine that, if you want to sell your home, lower the price til you find the market.
I track the Indianapolis Realtor site, http://www.mibor.com. Average sale price in central Indiana:
09/25 $155,494
11/21 $155,088
So not crashing down, but creeping down here. And those prices don’t include new construction and foreclosures.
Yesterday I posted a link with homebuilders in your state going bankrupt. It was at the Fort Wayne Daily News, but the link expired.
I’d like to see a list of builders going bankrupt for Illinois …
Mina
I live outside of Detroit and things are crazy here. Forclosures everywhere and I am seeing more and more corporate owned homes driving the prices down. Houses that were 200k in January now have comps in the same neighborhood that are 150 to 180.
Me and the wife tried to buy in Dec 05 but the deal fell through. Thanksfully i found this blog shirtly thereafter and I am in no hurry to buy. Can’t wait for 08! I will now be looking in neighborhoods I couldnt’ afford last year.
sorry for the typos!
typos schmypos welcome to the club!
cksh, my daughter lives in Detroit. She is looking for a place in Birmingham, has told the realtors there she will pay 25%-50% of the list price and no more. All the realtors say forget it. My daughter tells them if they won’t deal the banks will next year.
Just hang on. She will get her price, you might also.
You mention corporate owned homes driving prices down. I am starting to see an interesting trend in my area of relocation service companies owning homes. I think an executive or middle manager is taking an assignment overseas or somewhere out of town and their company gives them cash for their house and then pays a relocation company to liquidate it.
Is anyone familiar with these types of arangements? Are there deals to be had here or do they generally market them well enough and have deep enough pockets that they aren’t as good as other more motivated sellers?
I saw on the CBS weekend evening news a few weekends ago that if a house forecloses in your neighborhood your RE value decreases by 20K. Has that been priced in yet.
Good news from St George, UT. There is no housing bubble! My local newspaper, The St George Spectrum, has a front cover story today on the huge, wonderful growth of our county. Our population is now around 130,000 with projections that it will increase to 350,000 by 2010.
There is also a graph showing the decrease , 40 plus %, in building permits for the year. However, there is no need to worry for the permit decline. The author of the article states “although the number of permits has dropped the city is steadily and continually busy”.
I have been watching St George since 1992 and have lived here since 2003. This place had very slow growth until about 5 years ago. We are now overrun in (empty) residential and commercial properties. There are eight homes “for sale” on my street. Four of these have been for sale over a year. The majority of new businesses that have come here in the last two years are housing related, tile stores, furniture stores, mattress stores, interior design studios. Oh, and alot of banks. Many more than it seems a small community needs.
Word on the street is that the construction market is dead. These guys were so busy with work that it was almost impossible to get them to even call back on any “small job”. Things must be changing because I am now getting call backs on jobs that I asked for quotes on last year.
Ben posted a link the other day from the Deseret News in Salt Lake City. I took this excerpt from the article and pondered it:
Chris Gamvourulous, president of Ivory Development Co., Utah’s biggest homebuilder, said Ivory likely will build more houses in 2006 than it did in 2005. In 2005, Ivory pulled 1,058 single-family home permits.
However, Gamvourulous said, the company remains concerned over the “investor presence” in the Salt Lake market. In October 2005, Ivory Homes began making its buyers sign an agreement, promising that their house purchase would be used as a “principal or secondary residence” and also agreeing to not sell the property for at least one year. Violators are subject to a $25,000 penalty.
“We think in our communities we are going to be OK, but it just depends on how individual builders and developers deal with it in their individual communities,” Gamvourulous said. “If they refuse to sell to speculators and investors, then their communities will probably be OK.”
Gamvourulous said the slowdown in residential permits does not indicate the sky is falling.
“We’re optimistic, but we are very cautious,” Gamvourulous said. “Just because things are transacting doesn’t mean they are real. It could be speculators. There are recisions.”
My thoughts were this…A) What prevents the builder from replacing the speculator/investor. Doesn’t the phrase “spec homes” indicate anything? B) Can we really believe that what they are saying they’re doing is what they actually are doing to eliminate the speculators? Or is all this just talk to make theselves look good in the media? C) Not everyone’s honest these days, so what real assurances are there that any of this will save us.
Maybe just chant “All real estate is Local” and don’t talk about the elephant in the room that is the NAR 38 state slump report that indicates otherwise!
“…also agreeing to not sell the property for at least one year. Violators are subject to a $25,000 penalty”
OK, if you agree you will not drop the prices of your houses, or otherwise include free amenities, for one year. Otherwise, you owe me the difference, plus a $25,000 penalty.
What?!?
Our population is now around 130,000 with projections that it will increase to 350,000 by 2010.
Are those numbers right? 2010 is only a bit over three years away, and they are expecting the population to nearly triple? Sounds like fantasy to me. (Or nightmare, take your pick.) I’d certainly not be basing any financial decisions on that projection.
Sorry, I should have been clearer, instead of just quoting from the article. The 130,000 number is for all of Washington County, where St George is located. St George population was about 50,000 in 2000, 65,000 in 05 and projected around 90,000 today. However, the 350,000 number for the county is something that the local prognosticaters have been using to justify new taxes for infrastructure and new schools. The 2010 prediction is looking alittle foolish now so the new date everyone has started using is now 2020.
Some places are slumping independent of the bubble - as in there may have been no bubble from 01-05 but their economies are dying like in the case of detroit. That is sad, of course the bubble areas make me burst out laughing. Who cares if some dumbass hummer driving, starbucks drinking, mistress F*(king, cliche spewing wanna be trump gets violated by the miami condo price drop. The real america is in the steel and other blue collar workers who make the damn hummer. Detroits pain is our pain, SD and Miami and other bubble spots pain is our comedy central.
Cool.
Cow_tipping.
Bush legacy - I remember when offshoring & outsourcing was happening after 9/11. At which point Bush wanted to create the utopian ownership society, it didn’t seem to have anything to do with work and the American work ethic.
To GWB:
“It’s another fine mess you have gotten us into”
When you buy into a tract that had alot of speculators/flippers or unqualified buyers ,what do you think it’s going to do to the value of your property ? So, if you see alot of for-sale signs in a given tract or area you know that the prices just might not be stable because there will be many foreclosures or reduced sales coming up .There should only be a certain % of sellers selling at any given time in a area , in a normal market .
Now we have a excess inventory , desperate dumping market ,while the NAR is saying “it’s a good time to buy or sell.”
‘People are reading the news, people are watching the news, and it’s all about the housing slowdown. You hear it enough and you think the sky is falling,’ said Scott M. Heyerdahl, chairman of Greater Milwaukee Association of Realtors.”
Scott, the sky is falling.
Oh!, OK, I’m listening…
Then, prove to me that it’s not.
Well, well, well. I just interviewed for a job back in Madison, after moving out (and selling for a decent if not overpowering pile of cash) in 2005.
Methinks the way to go should I land the position is find a good rental, avoid realtors like the plague they are, and prepare to aggressively lowball in the neighborhoods I like, maybe sometime in ‘08…