People Are Really Taking Their Sweet Time In Maryland
The Capital Gazette reports from Maryland. “Anne Arundel County home prices dropped last month and sales slowed amid the national fallout from the subprime mortgage market. Homes also were sitting on the market nearly twice as long as they were at this time last year.”
“Meanwhile, people are losing their piece of the American dream. Carolyn Krohn, an Annapolis attorney who specializes in consumer bankruptcies, said she’s seen ‘more people lose their homes in the last year than the entire time I’ve been in my practice.’”
“Her practice has shifted to focus on Chapter 13 bankruptcy cases, which homeowners file to stop their homes from going on the auction block, she said. ‘The Chapter 13’s have increased exponentially,’ she said.”
“‘People are really taking their sweet time,’ said Bill Hyland, an associate broker in Annapolis. He said there are currently 29 condos and townhomes for sale in the Chesapeake Harbour community of Annapolis. So far this year, five homes in that community have sold, and for at least 10 percent less than they would have last year, he said.”
“Mr. Hyland said one home was originally listed for $590,000 in March 2006 and sold in February for $390,000.”
“Jeanne Hawkins, who lives in Carroll County, said she’s in no rush to buy a home. She and her husband have been shopping for a waterfront home in Anne Arundel and Annapolis since January.”
“‘There’s so much inventory,’ she said. Ms. Hawkins said sellers have come down on their prices and more homes are coming on the market ‘but they are not selling.’”
“She said she’ll buy a home ‘as soon as we find the right one at the right price.’”
The Baltimore Sun from Maryland. “The average sale price in Baltimore and the five surrounding counties rose 1.88 percent from $310,323 in April last year, Metropolitan Regional Information Systems Inc. reported yesterday. Half the jurisdictions in the region registered an increase, and half a decrease.”
“Arundel County had the biggest drop, at nearly 5 percent. In Baltimore City, the average price fell 1.79 percent, from April a year ago, the first drop since January 2003.”
“The mixed-price picture came as home sales continued to stumble. The city’s price drop likely reflects a slump in once rapidly appreciating, expensive waterfront neighborhoods such as Canton and Federal Hill, rather than a broader drop, said one economist.”
“‘Those were areas seen as very hot markets,” said Daraius Irani, of Towson University. ‘People rushed into those markets and housing prices were bid up substantially. As the market has softened, and there is a decline in demand and tightening credit restrictions, those are areas that are likely to see slowdown.’”
“The arrival of spring hasn’t brought the boost to the housing market that typically comes with the season, agents said. And some believe that tightening credit requirements will reduce the pool of buyers.”
“‘It is somewhat of a random market,’ said Tom Mooney, a partner with O’Conor & Mooney Realtors in Baltimore. ‘We’re getting showings, but buyers are not as quick to pull the trigger. There’s very little impulse buying any more.’”
“While 6,524 homes were listed for sale in April alone, contracts and contingent contracts were reached on just over half that number, or 3,536, properties, the MRIS said. The number of homes for sale topped 17,000, nearly three times as many as were listed two years earlier at the height of the housing boom.”
“Buyers are holding out, expecting that prices will come down more.”
“‘The market has not stabilized to the point where everybody is on the same page yet,’ said Sharon Martin-Sims, a broker in Baltimore. ‘For this time of year, we should have been a little stronger by now.’”
“‘Since buyers know it’s a buyers market, they want to offer much lower than what sellers are asking for,’ Martin-Sims said. ‘Sellers, on the other side, don’t want to understand the fact that prices should be coming down a little bit.’”
“Offers tend to be for less than asking price, by 5 percent to 10 percent, on average, Realtors said. Martin-Sims said sellers are beginning to adjust prices more quickly. A four-bedroom Colonial with a two-car garage in the Ten Hills neighborhood of Baltimore went on sale for $499,000 in September and has now been reduced to $399,000.”
“Condo jitters are rippling through major downtown Baltimore projects on the drawing boards.”
“A developer planning twin towers that could be the tallest in Baltimore presented designs for the first phase yesterday, but said the towers themselves will have to wait until the condo market picks back up.”
“Meanwhile, two other companies planning downtown skyscrapers said yesterday that they’ve pulled back on the number of condos they plan to build.”
“Richard W. Naing of RWN Development Group, thinks it’s not a good time to be selling or building condos. ‘It’s not just the market, it’s also the perception,’ he said. ‘Right now the perception is very negative, you couldn’t even get financing if you wanted to.’”
“Baltimore has fewer condo units being actively marketed now than it did a year ago, in part because several projects were dropped, said William Rich, of Delta Associates in Alexandria, Va. Even so, sales have slowed so much that it would take more than four years to sell them all at the current pace, compared with less than two years this time in 2006, he said.”
“‘If they all were to come online now,’ Rich said of the skyscraper projects, ‘that wouldn’t bode well.’”
The Gazette. “While the residential mortgage market is ‘tightening up’ across most of the nation, mortgage industry players in Maryland are more sanguine.”
“‘It’s good to buy now. The weather has broke, housing prices are low and mortgage rates are good,’ said Charles DiPino, president of the Maryland Association of Mortgage Brokers.”
“Still, the home mortgage market is nowhere near where it was two years ago, many say. ‘There’s been a tightening in the subprime market, and Wall Street is not buying loans as much as it did,’ DiPino said.”
“According to Michael Galeone, executive VP of The Columbia Bank, the subprime market was ‘abused’ during the mortgage boom of two years ago.”
“‘The subprime market got into trouble as lenders began lending to people with less-than-sterling credit qualifications,’ he said. ‘Sub-prime lending lets you borrow based on the value of your home, maybe up to 125 percent of the value. The trouble happens when the market goes against those people.”
“‘People bought more than they could afford,’ he said. ‘In the past, they could buy an $800,000 house at 3.5 or 4 percent interest. Then the market shifted and their monthly payments doubled. Many people didn’t have the cash to cover it, and they’re struggling.’”
“Foreclosures in the first quarter of 2007 totaled 2,031 in Maryland, up 88 percent from last year’s first quarter, according to RealtyTrac.”
“‘In the last few years, you had a lot of people who were not really qualified to buy a house buy a house anyway,’ said Cary Reines, executive VP of Mason Dixon Funding in Rockville. ‘Now they’re finding out that they can’t afford to keep them. We’ve seen a lot of that in the last six to nine months.’”
Interesting…
With exception of this cheerleader (2, 4, 6, 8, real estate always appreciates! Go team~)
“‘It’s good to buy now. The weather has broke, housing prices are low and mortgage rates are good,’ said Charles DiPino, president of the Maryland Association of Mortgage Brokers.”
Everybody else mentioned has somewhat of a grip on reality, in terms of realty…
I would have asked, “housing prices are low compared to what you robotic, self-serving, brain-dead, greedy, soulless jacka$$?”
“The weather has broke” ???
Um . . .
Never mind.
At what point in time does it become clear that this subprime issue has spread and that prices are falling significantly?
‘People are really taking their sweet time,’
This recurrent fallacy, suggesting that home buyers who normally would be buying are deciding to sit on the sidelines and waiting for a better deal, seems to recently show up in at least one of Ben’s posts every day.
What has actually happened is that the kind of folks who willingly and cluelessly bought at prices they could not afford in 2005-2006 have been sidelined by the most draconian possible tightening of lending standards: Most of the lenders who only six months ago would have freely handed out loans sufficiently large for GFs to financially hang themselves have gone out of business.
I don’t understand, I thought they weren’t making any more time?
At what point do we quit pointing the finger at the sub-prime meltdown as the cause of the real estate bust?
About the point when it becomes entirely clear that there are major problems with high risk lending to Alt-A and prime customers.
“At what point do we quit pointing the finger at the sub-prime meltdown as the cause of the real estate bust?”
Yes, everybody really should quit that. We all know it is really the media’s fault.
I have to say that I am amazed that the MSM doesn’t yet realise that they have lost their credibility with the public. I read the article in the link below this morning, about so called “economists” being worried about a slowdown, and I wondered why that should be any of their business. It is like a sports commentator being worried that Team A or B will lose by a wide margin and openly expressing his concerns without anybody questioning his motives. For goodness sake economists are expected to make independent and objective analyses about economic trends and leave the worrying to us. I always knew the MSM and the experts have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo, but the standards are plumbing new depths every day. Enough said. Here is the link.
http://www.connpost.com/ci_5862866
I endured about 15 minutes of cnn the other day, trying to catch a glimpse of the Catalina fire…
I was looking at some furniture ads today and noticed that they were offering incentives and free upgrades to buy furniture along with no payments ,no interest and no down payments .Did the real estate lending/building industry copy the furniture /retail stores ? Of course we all know the furniture stores throw in some free stuff but they raise the price of the regular item to cover it .
Is buy one get one free coming up next in the housing industry ? Maybe builders should have a going out of business sale .
But as far as a sub-prime lending meltdown goes , sub-prime lending made the RE market IMHO .
I should have said “only” cause of the bust. So many of the folks quoted in these articles want to hang this on subprime alone, when it should have been obvious to even the casual observer a long, long time ago that the run up in prices was unsustainable.
Exactly. The subprime bust was caused by the drop in unsustainable high prices, not the other way around. One the paradigm of perpetually rising prices ended the subprime business model was dead. But of course it accelerates the decline.
If you want to make someone believe something, make sure there is something in it for them. VERY few people are eager to believe something that is a direct negative to them.
So, given the options:
a) This is a short-term issue triggered by lending issues, that has a prices slipping slightly, so a lot of people are sitting on the sidelines waiting to jump in as soon as this slight slip ends….
Or,
b) There was a mass run up tirggered by fraudulant flipping, mass speculation, and idiotic lending/borrowing. The idiot lenders are now losing their ass(ets) and have cut 1/3rd of borrowers out of the market. At the same time, the idiot borrowers are being foreclosed out while speculators are trying to get out while builders are dumping supply into the market. Prices have to crash back to inflation adjusted 2002 levels, and then aren’t coming back for decades until inflation drags them slowly back up.
Given these options, if you owned 6 properties, which would you prefer to believe?
Yeah, I know a lot of people with 1 or 2 properties who would rather believe (a).
“Offers tend to be for less than asking price, by 5 percent to 10 percent, on average, Realtors said. Martin-Sims said sellers are beginning to adjust prices more quickly. A four-bedroom Colonial with a two-car garage in the Ten Hills neighborhood of Baltimore went on sale for $499,000 in September and has now been reduced to $399,000.”
Sharon, my math is a little rusty - but I think that a 100k drop in price is closer to 20% than the meager 5 to 10% in your statement.
More from Sharon: ” prices should be coming down a little bit.’”
A 100k haircut seems more than ‘a little bit” to me.
She means in comparison to the massive declines that we will see in the future. Everything is relative.
I was born and raised in Maryland… now, live in California. To have that many foreclosures in Maryland in quite a story. Marylanders are known for being wise financially, they’re not super-risk takers. This is really telling of the direction that the national real estate market… I clearly view this as “we’re going to be down for some time to come.”
plus lots of fed gov parasites in md that never,ever lose their jobs
your fixation on ‘lefties’ and ‘fed gov parasites’ is almost comical
from dictionary.com:
parasite: 2. a person who receives support, advantage, or the like, from another or others without giving any useful or proper return, as one who lives on the hospitality of others.
A complete accurate and concise description.
flat makes a living using the extremely expensive government satellites. I pay taxes, I want a cut of his profits.
“‘The subprime market got into trouble as lenders began lending to people with less-than-sterling credit qualifications,’ he said. ‘Sub-prime lending lets you borrow based on the value of your home, maybe up to 125 percent of the value. The trouble happens when the market goes against those people.”
Let’s see — 125 percent LTV loan on a fraudulent appraisal (the actual market value was only 80 percent of the amount stated on the loan).
Next thing you know, the home is only “worth” 80 percent of the fraudulently appraised value, while the option ARM has reset at a level the FB cannot handle. The short sale gap facing the lender is (125-80)/80 X 100% = 56% of the initial (actual) market value.
GetStucco your calculation is exactly why many believe that a 50% decline in the near future (say within two years) is more than realistic.
Notice that my calculation only addresses a single one of the myriad bubble premiums — the fraud premium.
Another interesting thought experiment is to compare what a rational investor would pay for a home if they thought its market value would go up by 23% a year over the next decade, to 4X the purchase price (as the median El Ay survey respodent did in a 2003 survey), compared to if they thought there would be 0% net appreciation over the next decade. I am guessing a rational investor would be willing to pay about 75% less.
One further point: The effect of subtracting off premiums is multiplicitive.
So, for instance, if both the fraud premium and the euphoric-expected-returns premium were in play, then the 56% and 75% reductions would together imply a net reduction of
1-(1-.56)X(1-.75) = 89%.
I don’t bother trying to explain this to my lovely wife…
I’m also confused.
Why don’t we just round it out and say a 100% decline could be in the cards in bubble areas where alot of sub-prime lending ,speculation ,or fraud occurred .
It is easier just to look at 2002 prices and adjust up for inflation. This means a 30-40% drop for Phoenix.
Wizard’s 100% decline sounds humorous, but a number of people have told me that the house where I am a tenant “won’t sell”. I say, “Oh well, it’ll sell some time at some price” and the disinterested parties tell me why not. Too many steep stairs for the well-heeled retirees who can afford to heat it and pay the taxes. Heck, I’d buy it myself at, let’s say, 40% of the current asking price. Even though my rent is a better deal than that. (Asking price = 43x annual rent.)
But I think you could get a excess supply decline in value premium in a market like this that could take prices further down than 2002 prices +inflation .
There are some places where they built housing that will have no demand what-so-ever ,even if the prices go down to 2002 prices +inflation . There was some pretty stupid building going on .Alot of these luxury Condo buildings for example are not going to get the demand they thought and will crash in price . Building that does not meet end-user demand will suffer big time . Once some projects go downhill by foreclosures ,vacant homes , etc, they will go down further .People will be scared to purchase at any price unless it’s a give-a-way price . Also these places will need to be purchased before they need to be bulldozed .
No magic rule says there has to be an inflation premium off 2002 prices. An accelerating slide won’t stop because of mere inflationary adjustment fairness.
Nor will it take a rest at an arbitrary year’s level.
The momentum can well cascade to a level back to the prior century. And beyond.
97 or BUST!
Well said, ronin.
Again… despite the huge runup, homeowner’s equity (as a percentage of value) has declined throughout the boom. If prices merely revert to pre-boom levels, the average mortgaged homeowner has *zero* equity. What happens when there’s no equity to trade up? Median homes prices everywhere must revert to a maximum of 3x median income.
auger-inn, it’s more like “1977 or BUST!”.
NAR Morning Weather Report…
There appears to be some unusal weather in OUR little housing racket. A massive Cold Front of REALITY has caused a Spring DEEP FREEZE throughout the US.
In other weather related news, it’s just ANOTHER “COLD DAY in Hell” for you FBs.
The Gazette is getting more and more pathetic by the article. No research on their part, just positive quotes from the industry cheerleaders for the most part…
Isn’t that what “journalists” are here for? God forbid they actually do some research.
Too expensive. Much easier to just forward “press releases”.
“Her practice has shifted to focus on Chapter 13 bankruptcy cases, which homeowners file to stop their homes from going on the auction block, she said. ‘The Chapter 13’s have increased exponentially,’ she said.”
File a Chapter 13 bankruptcy…?
I guess this is the next bail out option for sellers who can’t sell their homes.
I’ve always liked the intensity of Chapter 7…
If realtors were really doing their job they’d walk into a sellers house and show them how many houses are on the MLS, along with how many similar to the seller’s house are listed, how long they have been listed, how many price reductions they’ve had,etc. Sellers are blind right now, but for realtors to say they need to give a “little” on price is ridiculous. They need about a 40% reduction to pre 2004 prices. Tell it like it is and quit pussy footing around. It’s bad. Print out the stats and shove it under their noses. Sellers really need a wakeup call.
I agree! From the very first meeting the RE needs to get these dolts to understand the market is going down to 97 pricing and the sellers can decide whether they want to get off the elevator at the 2003/4 pricing or ride it down to 97 pricing. In no event is the elevator going to be returning to the 2005 level before it makes it’s journey to the basement and it is quickly dropping.
SInce my sis in law has now decided she doesn’t want to sell afterall, I’m thinking some already are.
With the number of listings in MLS, the realtors must be begging the unrealistic people to yank their houses off the market to get the listings down.
Folks,
In Fairfax Co, VA, there does appear to be a slight bounce this spring. Some people, especially two-income families, seem still willing to pay bubble prices. Some coworkers are still of the mind that prices will keep going up. One guy was going to buy a house 30 miles away from work, in a neighboring county, for 8 times his income. I showed him several articles (especially the PIMCO guy who says he is still renting) and he changed his mind.
But there are still lenders willing to lend 100%. The credit tightening has been only a little. So when will this madness reverse seriously? I think that prices will resume their downward trend again in the summer and fall/winter, but it is just frustrating to wait to see this crazy lending stopped.
I’m seeing sales ,but not at higher prices
and I’m a mile from the beltway 22151
I was looking at 22031 and 22032. You can follow some prices in zillow or look at the MRIS summary and see the slight bounce I am talking about.
Are there SOME lenders making 100% loans still? Yes. BUT they have substantially raised their FICO score requirements, and have added the requirement for full W-2 verifications among other things. I know this to be true, as I have applied for a home loan last month, and compared that to my home loan offers from three months ago.
Three months ago, I received more than 8 offers for 100% loan to value, no doc required. All with a FICO score of 610 (due to my business going under in 2003.)
Fast forward to a month ago, I received ONE offer, and that was basically not a real offer. And it was no longer 100%, more like 95%, and at a much higher interest rate.
Lending standards have cut off the flow of new buyers in my market for sure. Sales of all homes, across all levels (entry-level, move-up, and high-end) have gone dead. Really dead. Very nice mid-range homes built by Wilson Homes have gone from $210 sq. ft. (March) to $140-$145 (early May). This is for homes that went into escrow late in 2006 and failed to close. One drive through all of their active subdivisions shows the real world impact of the tightening of credit.
THE GAME IS OVER. Prices will drop substantially (they already have started in my town). Homebuilders cannot afford to sit on finished, unsold inventory. They will lower the cost every week or so, until they sell.
The DC area has maybe stalled (especially close in) and outer regions are dropping a bit but nothing near normal sane prices. I’m tired of waiting for sanity to return here. I do think once defense spending is reduced - or the US goes bankrupt- this area will be hit hard.
dcrenter,
It is tru that sanity has not come back. On defense spending, I think the y-o-y increases in defense spending were pretty much over by 2005, and but the prior contracts can last for a few years, I think it may take a couple of more years for this effect to show up. Also, I think creative financing had a major role in sustaining this bubble, and once lenders tighten further the effects will show up. It is a matter of when lenders tighten for real and whether there is a recession coming. Although DC area is a bit more recession-proof than other area, no area is really recession-proof.
The next BFs are NOT “taking their Sweet Time”
They’re all BROKE !
breakdown of potential buyers:
75% trap in their house, can’t move up, down or sideway, few realize it i.e. I’m holding out
15% can’t qualify for subprime or Alt-A loans, shouldn’t be buyers to start
10% brought in 00′, 01′ and perhaps 02′, but still think prices will bounce back so that they can sell and move up, clueless greed
5% sober, watching the retarded behavior of humankind
Some of us right here might not fit into any of these categories. I certainly don’t fit into any of the first three, and I wouldn’t describe myself as “sober” — more like, impatient.
Just noticed your %s add up to 105%, hee hee you took an exotic loan on the population statistics.
“‘In the last few years, you had a lot of people who were not really qualified to buy a house buy a house anyway,’ said Cary Reines, executive VP of Mason Dixon Funding in Rockville. ‘Now they’re finding out that they can’t afford to keep them.”
Bingo. And there aren’t enough “qualifying” buyers waiting in the wings to prop up prices under higher rates/tighter standards/no appreciation.
I have a 3 BR Condo in Centreville VA, which I bought for about 25 percent less than its peak bubble price. I’ve been tracking 3 BR condos in Fairfax Cty ever since purchasing in 2004. Inventory fluctuates to between 8 and 10 times the inventory that I saw when i purchased. While you might see a bump in Fairfax, which I don’t necessarily buy into, it certainly isn’t in the condo market.
Goes back to supply and demand . Little bitty buyer pool but a massive amount of homes for sale . Heck , the criminal rings aren’t even buying any more .
wow, if the methlab folks get out then we’re really screwed
LOL
I heard on NPR a year ago that 40% of burn victims admitted to hospitals, are a result of meth lab explosions…
How is real estate in Methgarrry Meth Ross doing, anyway?
It’s the old supply and demand rule. When supply is high demand is low. Following suit, prices will have to fall accordingly. When an area has 25,000 houses on the market and 1000 buyers you better:
1) Drastically cut your price to entice one of those 1000 buyers or
2) Plan on sitting a long time until that massive amount of inventory disappears and
3) Plan on your house being worth a lot less when everything shakes out
You leave out a factor.
High supply, low demand, AND prices well above support levels.
You can’t buy one and rent it out for a profit. You can’t buy one for close to what your rent is. You can’t buy one and hope to flip it quickly for big profit. Builders continue to build and dump. People are more than willing to let the bank take their house while they return to renting for less.
I live in maryland, and am considering putting in an offer on a house. It was listed for 648K, and is now bank-owned and offered at 470K. This seems to equate to a pre-2004 price.
House pricing is so subjective that you can’t just do simple math on pre-2004 levels. Is the house of good quality? is the neighborhood good? Title search / lien problems?
In the insane market of last few years, look for problems EVERYWHERE, be paranoid about any deal. The market is just starting to crash.
If you were to list that house as a $4000/mo rental, would there be any takers?
Here’s the house I’m referring to: http://tinyurl.com/2mvn2c
It’s been on the market about 160 days. Originally listed for 648K, now relisted at 475K. I’ve been through the house twice, and you can definitely tell it’s been vacant for at while (foreclosure+listing time). The house isn’t great, but it’s maybe a mile from the columbia mall, and has 1.7 acres that could be subdivided into 2 lots.
Looking at the tax records, this place was last purchased in 2001 for $290K. So, $475K is way to high!
sorry, should be “too”
Do you plan to live there for many years (you have young children, the schools are good, etc)? Is renting in this neighborhood possible, and if so how do rents compare? Can you put 20% or more down payment?
If it’s not a financial stretch for you and you plan to live there for years, I’d consider it. Just don’t think of the house as an investment.
Check the tax records here:
http://sdatcert3.resiusa.org/rp_rewrite/
Put in the county and then check by street address. It will show you the last few sales (usually 3). You will be able to see when the house was built, the square footage of the house and lot, and maybe what the original price was (if it wasn’t flipped many times). This might help you determine a “fair” value.
The real research gem in Maryland is this site:
http://www.mdlandrec.net/msa/stagser/s1700/s1741/cfm/index.cfm#CLIENT.URLTOKEN#
It takes about 24 hours to get a free account on business days. This site lets you research loan data to see how much the owner has the house financed for. It also shows you all the other properties the owner currently owns, or has owned, so you can tell easily if they are a flipper…
And use the Maryland Judiciary Case Search site to tell if they owner has had foreclosure proceedings started against them:
http://casesearch.courts.state.md.us/inquiry/inquiry-index.jsp
Thanks for the links!
Think about everything everyone else has said — quality of house, neighborhood, schools, etc. From researching hundreds of properties on the tax site, I have seen how low prices went during the last downturn and how long it took people to recover. Pre-2004 prices wouldn’t be comfortable for me. Prices had already gone too high by then. I’d go back to ‘98 or ‘99 and then add reasonable appreciation from that price to determine what today’s price should be. The question is what is “reasonable appreciation”. I’d like to know what the average historic appreciation was pre-bubble for Montgomery and Howard Counties. If anyone has that info, I’d appreciate your sharing. Thanks!
Too much. You want a pre-2001 price (and there is no such thing as reasonable appreciation).
Our friends in Rockville have finally put their house on the market as he is about to retire. It’s at the high end of prices in their neighborhood.
It gets better. They bought their retirement place in the spring of 2006. In Florida!
Good to see my nut-house state of Maryland getting coverage. Along with Northern Va (NOVA), we are the “quiet bubble” where prices went up to stupid levels, and everyone smiled and nodded, and figured since we live near the Big Circus Tent of DC, everything is fine, this the way it should be, and it is “different here.”
I’ve seen old, Post-War shacks in Glen Burnie rise from about $100,000 to $250,000 to $300,000 in a couple of years. Yeah, that makes sense! My favorite that I’ve seen thus far is a 2 bed, 1 bath, run-down Post War Cape Cod with no central air that has a wishing-price of $265,000. How about $65,000 - that seems fair! What a joke!
Then, there’s the looney condo development that those idiots at Ryan built not far from where I live. They could have put in a bunch of affordable townhomes, but overpriced condos make them more money, of course. Well, the basement 2 bed, 2 bath units originally sold for $279,000, and the 2 floor, upper-floor ones sold for about $320,000. Mind you, this is Glen Burnie, near a gas station and with an adult bookstore across the street - class all the way! Well, now at least 6 of those stupid condos are for sale by people who bought them at the peak, and 1 just went into foreclosure a week or two ago. Duhhh…
It is not different here, but I am just getting so sick of waiting for serious price drops to wipe the smug smile off the faces of my coworkers who all bought $400,000+ houses on about $100,000 a year, max, combined income with their spouses. Idiots keep telling me everything is fine since real estate always goes up and they can also refinance (becase debt = wealth!) I haven’t heard as much of this lately, but bring on the serious price declines! There’s a lot of old housing stock in Maryland that should be priced for entry level people like myself, not rich people… I just want the prices to reflect that reality.