Creating An Infinite Level Of Demand
It’s Friday desk clearing time for this blogger. “According to a new report published by real estate analytics firm Clear Capital, the national market has at last rebounded from the burst housing bubble, as evidenced by home prices rising within 2 percent of their inflation-adjusted long-run average levels. However, given the current quarterly rate of national growth — 1.2 percent — peak home prices won’t be reached until 2021, per the report. ‘The major finding of this report is that the days of arbitrary increases in the real estate market are gone,’ says Sissy Lappin, principal of Lappin Properties in Houston.”
“One Omaha husband-wife real estate team drops off custom packages to strangers they hope to nudge into moving. A competitor has started hosting office call nights where the mission is to drum up house sellers.Such ramped-up prospecting tactics reflect today’s local housing market where the selection of for-sale homes has hit a 10-year low. Factors keeping sellers at bay in turn have led to a reversal of a nearly three-year growth streak in Omaha-area home sales. ‘This is very unusual,’ said Mike Riedmann of NP Dodge Real Estate. ‘There are not enough listings; buyers are getting frustrated.’”
“What do sales of statues of St. Joseph tell us about the housing market? Broughton’s is the Canadian source for a St. Joseph Home Kit that sells for $10.95. Broughton’s keeps between 200 and 250 kits in stock, and, in its last fiscal year, sold about 1,500. According to Brian Broughton Jr., a sales representative at the Toronto outlet, real estate agents buy them in bulk. Individual home sellers purchase them, as well, notably when they’re having trouble selling their homes. But Mr. Broughton didn’t necessarily see a pattern. ‘When the market crashes, people tend to go back to faith,’ he said.”
“A senior government official has said the housing situation in Macau is ‘not bad,’ disputing complaints that there is not enough housing and that it costs too much. But the head of the Secretariat for Public Works and Transport, Francis Wong Chan Tong, said he understood that people were worried about the future. Statistics and Census Service data show the average price of residential space last year was 81,811 patacas (US$10,226.40) a square metre, 43 percent more than the year before. Mr Wong gave figures to support his assertion about the housing situation. ‘Macau right now has about 185,200 households, while there are nearly 210,000 finished homes here,’ he said.”
“The property market is such a complete mess that nobody could say with any degree of certainty that it has bottomed out. Since the last quarter of 2008, just after the peak of the housing boom, residential property prices have fallen by an estimated 23 per cent. Given the crazy prices at which land and apartments were selling for in 2006 and 2007 a 50 per cent plus decline in values would be a more realistic correction.”
“There is the habit of Cypriots to set a price for a property and refuse to sell for anything less even if there are no buyers at that price; the person would still claim that this was the value of the property. This is set to change over the next few years as the foreclosures begin. Is €700,000 a realistic price to pay for even a luxury 3-bedroom flat in a new block in Nicosia, given the average salaries and the tiny size of the economy? This is Nicosia, not Paris or London. But during the bubble years common sense went out the window.”
“Many of India’s real estate and construction companies — their finances already squeezed by a sharp economic slowdown — are diverting funds from housing and other projects to election campaign contributions. Many projects are stalled, at least temporarily. Meanwhile, potential home owners are seething at the delays in getting possession of properties they have already largely paid for as developers are running out of funds.”
“‘When we went to the site, it was dead. We could count the labourers sitting and relaxing. There was no machinery working and we saw no raw materials that would be used,’ said Ms Ashima, a single mother of two who was expecting to move into her new home in Noida earlier this year, but has now been told it will take another two-and-a-half years. ‘People say India is booming. Where is it booming?’”
“At a site where a planned California escapee has done some research, called Bend, Oregon No. 1 among ‘5 Incredible Places to Live That You Can Afford.’ Site founder Dale Partridge said he lives in Southern California, which some believe is perfect but that his family doesn’t ‘really enjoy it. Sure, the weather is great, but the traffic is insane, the people are rude, and everything is far too expensive.’”
“As usual, commenters on the site pick apart the rankings, with several saying Bend (and others) are not affordable or an ‘incredible’ place to live. ‘Bend is great if you’re retired from Silicon Valley, wear only North Face jackets, shop at REI and Trader Joe’s regularly, and can afford to drop around $400K for a house,’ Aaron writes. ‘Bendme’ chimes in similarly, calling Bend ‘pretty snooty at times and the housing is incredibly overpriced AND there are no jobs!’”
“Flood insurance for Teresa Secord’s modest La Crosse home cost her $525 last year. So when the bank told her she’d have to pay nearly $3,700 this year, she gave them an earful. ‘I told the bank the house was going up for sale. And they said, ‘You’re going to have a hard time selling it,’ Secord said. ‘And I said, ‘Oh, I’m not going to be the one selling it — you are. You can start foreclosure right now ’cause we’re not sticking another dime into the money pit.’ Then I hung up on her.’”
“Tim Lemieux always thought he would buy a condo in Toronto. He visited open houses. He plugged various numbers into mortgage calculators. But even with the down payment, he calculated that he would be almost doubling his monthly expenses with the mortgage, condo fees and property taxes; he now rents a one-bedroom apartment on the subway line for $900. ‘It seemed like I was tying a lot of money down with not much of a living benefit or quality of life benefit,’ says the 40-year-old Toronto resident who works at an insurance company. ‘You have to sell your house [to retire]. That’s everyone’s plan. If you don’t want to sell your house, it puts you in a bind as well. I invest and got a good financial advisor instead.’”
“Even from an investment point of view, David Kaufman, president of Westcourt Capital Corp, believes that your money may work better for you elsewhere. ‘We have 500 years of reliable real estate data and guess what the annual increase is [in real estate value]? It’s exactly the amount of inflation,’ he says. ‘Most people feel better when they own a home or when they think they own it — the bank owns it, right?’”
“Generous incentives including negative gearing and concessions on capital gains tax encourage investment in housing, to the extent that around one in seven Australian taxpayers now owns one or more investment properties. As there is no limit to how many properties local investors can negatively gear. Australia already has one of the highest levels of household debt in the OECD due to borrowings for property purchases, and this is growing fast. Overseas investors are adding to that demand.”
“The upshot is that local and global investor markets are combining to create what is essentially an infinite level of demand. Australian governments need to come to terms with the prospect that no amount of increase in housing supply will meet demand if there is no limit to that demand. The relation is complicated further by the fact that investment properties are often left vacant. Unofficial estimates from the City of Melbourne indicate that up to 90% are owned by investors and that a large number are unoccupied.”
“Last year the BC Globe and Mail ran a story about the closure of a two-year-old store called Green Design in Coal Harbour. The proprietors’ dream of supplying all those condo balconies in need of greening with space-saving wall planters, herbs and pot plants had come to naught, they said, because ‘a hefty share’ of the condos were empty most of the year round. The City of Vancouver estimates that at least 25% of new condos are owned by non-resident investors from less stable economies looking to park their wealth in a safe environment. The Green Design proprietors say these apartments are permanently empty. When the holiday-condos are included, many buildings are more than half empty.”
“High-density, high-rise, high-security and high-cost apartment towers are increasing housing supply, mainly for local and global elites to accumulate capital. A major consequence of the Australian government’s taxation and regulatory regimes regarding housing has been to increase prices by encouraging demand for housing as a commodity, rather than a place to live.”
space-saving wall planters, herbs and pot plants
phrasing needs work
You just need a translator from English to American.
British to American.
it’s always fun to ignore inflation
22151 is 8% off peak and we’re in Bama country- he hires they buy
It’s even more fun to substitute a counterfeit and call it inflation.
Know the difference.
Springfield, VA Housing Demand Falls Through 2009 Floor; Declines Accelerate
http://www.zillow.com/local-info/VA-Springfield-home-value/r_27228/#metric=mt%3D30%26dt%3D1%26tp%3D6%26rt%3D8%26r%3D27228%252C21241%252C42775%252C9083%26el%3D0
“I just don’t understand it,” says Farley Rothman, CEO of Official Information Services, Boston, Mass. “It’s almost as if people can’t afford to buy homes. Yet they can, they can. We’ve the printing press operating at speeds never before seen, we have banks continuing to make suspect loans with nothing down. We even have ObamaCare.
“I think all this talk about people having no money and stagnant incomes is hogwash. So what if the cost of meat is rising at a rapid rate? So what if flood insurance premiums are rising astronomically? So what if income taxes have gone up?
“The truth is that everyone can afford homes at $100 ore more per square foot. The problem is the Debbie Downers, who can afford homes but simply don’t want them. Sad to say, there are always the pathological among us. It’s a cross we must bear.
“Want to know what the real problem is? It’s a perception issue stemming from the fact that housing isn’t expensive enough. If it were less of a bargain, there’d be more buyers.”
I think we need a few made-up spokespeople on this board.
Farley Rothman is one. Perhaps there are others?
What do you expect them to do? Give it away?
“There is the habit of Cypriots to set a price for a property and refuse to sell for anything less even if there are no buyers at that price; the person would still claim that this was the value of the property.
“… the person would still claim that this was the value of the property.”
It works for me. I’d be out of business if the thinking was otherwise.
As long as I don’t have to write down the value of the underwater mortgages I hold I can convince outsiders that my bank is solvent. The moment I am forced to write down these mortgage values is the moment I become bankrupt.
In my view it’s questionable whether any Cyprus property has value. Who’s to say that your house won’t be used as a vehicle to tax you in order to bail out banks? Your savings already can be confiscated for that purpose. To say nothing of the island’s chronically tense political situation. There’s a beach resort town — the kind of place that speculators today would bid into the stratosphere — that’s been abandoned for 40 years.
There’s a beach resort town — the kind of place that speculators today would bid into the stratosphere — that’s been abandoned for 40 years.
Cyprus was invaded by Turkey in the 1970s.
The portion that Turkey now occupies has been ethnically and religiously cleansed. Property confiscated and churches turned into mosques or warehouses.
The world yawned.
You gonna invest in a place like that?
“You gonna invest in a place like that?”
+1 Or extend ‘em a line of credit?
Arlington, VA Housing Prices Crater 22%; Demand Collapses 21%
http://www.movoto.com/arlington-va/market-trends/
http://www.zillow.com/local-info/VA-Arlington-home-value/r_30258/#metric=mt%3D30%26dt%3D1%26tp%3D4%26rt%3D8%26r%3D30258%26el%3D0
Flood insurance for Teresa Secord’s modest La Crosse home cost her $525 last year. So when the bank told her she’d have to pay nearly $3,700 this year, she gave them an earful. ‘I told the bank the house was going up for sale. And they said, ‘You’re going to have a hard time selling it,’ Secord said. ‘And I said, ‘Oh, I’m not going to be the one selling it — you are. You can start foreclosure right now ’cause we’re not sticking another dime into the money pit.’ Then I hung up on her.’”
This is sad as La Crosse WI is a nice little town. Housing prices are going to crater here “for sure”.
Good for her! Me like this type of attitude and action. Dat dern Mississippi River prairie bumpkin lady got wise - decided not to board the Titanic.
Rubes, bumpkins and hillbillies from coast to coast are doing the same re: ObamaCare.
Nothing like the power of the words “Stick it!” to get your point across. “Don’t Tread On Me” survives. Indeedy dee it does.
bama fixed that- all taxpayers are paying
Sometimes I think Obama is the James Buchanan - or the Herbert Hoover - of the present.
Feeble, short-sighted approaches to massive problems.
We’ll continue to see this until we elect someone who isn’t a NeoCon-Progressive.
I said when he was first elected, he is the Hoover of this drama. It was too early for a Hero type. We won’t get a hero until our mania subsides.
We won’t get a hero ??
Been there done that…Bush was a hero remember…Going to protect us…Save us….Make the terrorists pay…
Evil doers!
Dave,
Busch wasn’t a hero in his phase of the grand political/economic cycle. Dufuss maybe.
The more people that do this, the more housing prices will be encouraged to drop.
Just Say No - to mortgages.
If “gearing” means leveraged, what does “negative gearing” mean?
It means their mortgage payments are higher than the rents they are receiving.
‘This is very unusual,’ said Mike Riedmann of NP Dodge Real Estate. ‘There are not enough listings; buyers are getting frustrated.’
So why aren’t builders addressing this shortage by building? Sure, in older, established neighborhoods there is no room to build new housing. But this is in freaking Omaha, not LA. This is a relatively small metro area in flyover country, surrounded by thousands of square miles of land. Even if they have to build at the edge of town, it’s not going to involve any kind of serious commute to anywhere.
So why isn’t new housing being built to meet the demand? Why is there an artificial shortage?
Why build more when there is no shortage?
‘Why is there an artificial shortage?’
You answered your own question. I’ve posted a few comments of builders being honest about it. They’ve said, “we’re not building because there’s lot’s of vacant houses out there”, etc. There is no shortage. I’ve asked before, why are there breathlessly, NO HOUSES TO BUY, almost everywhere, all over the world? It doesn’t make sense. Like the title of this post suggests; there is an infinite demand for something that always goes up.
Eventually, greed takes over and you end up with thousands of houses being planned in Manteca. We’ll see if they get built. Or the stupidity of the mania falls in on itself.
“It doesn’t make sense.”
This is the beauty of it. If it suddenly began to make sense then I would suddenly be out of business.
People are smart.
I wonder who’s smarter: rural rubes or coastal elitists?
Seems to be quite the contest.
It’s possible to be both smart and dumb at the same time.
True - and that’s why elitists have their psychologists.
Eventually, greed takes over and you end up with thousands of houses being planned in Manteca. We’ll see if they get built ??
Planning stage, although not cheap is peanuts compared to actually paying for the fee’s, bonds & permits….Land, many times is “optioned” and contingent on entitlements…So, when you see some big developer saying we have XXXX number of houses planned for po-dunk america, they really have not committed much money to the deal “yet”…When you see the excavators & graders on site, thats when they are all in…
It doesn’t make sense. Like the title of this post suggests; there is an infinite demand for something that always goes up.
I am reminded of my coworker who sold her Arvada house last summer in 2 days and received 5 offers, all above asking price. There’s room to build more houses in Arvada, so why aren’t builders popping them out? It’s sure seems like an orchestrated effort to inflate the bubble. Mr. Banker can withhold the construction loans to keep the mom-n-pop builders in check, but what’s keeping the corporate builders from slapping them up? Collusion?
To some extent, fear of losing money. But they are building in places. Las Vegas has signs up all over the place. And we already see this:
‘NO REASONABLE OFFER REFUSED!’
http://www.drhorton.com/Where-We-Build/Nevada/Las-Vegas/Las-Vegas/Promotions/HortonReady-com.aspx
I was reading this week about west Phoenix. There are 8,500 lots ready to go and another 2,500 permitted. 20,000 houses just approved near Santa Clara. How many thousands of condos going up in Miami and Boston? There are now 5,000 new houses approved in Flagstaff. Some shortage.
I guess a lot of builders got burned by the lead time during the last bust. In some sections of town, builders started industrial condo conversions in 2006, just in time for them to go on sale in mid 2008, oops. The boom-bust cycle is now outpacing construction.
20,000 houses just approved near Santa Clara ??
SC California ?? Maybe 20,000 apartments in the entire valley but houses ?? I don’t think so…
HOUSES
‘A California appellate court has ruled in favor of developers planning to build 21,000 homes on the banks of the Santa Clara River and has tossed out a 2012 court decision opposed to the project.’
http://thehousingbubbleblog.com/?p=8289
the Santa Clara River
Which is in southern Cal, on the north side of metro LA.
I meant Santa Clarita. I’ve never heard of Santa Clara. Kind of hard to keep all these California towns and cities straight, as it is the biggest state. Now Omaha, they’ve got a shortage of houses! With Nebraska being so small, relatively.
Q: What’s the second largest city in Nebraska?
A: Husker stadium on a Saturday.
Falls Church, VA Housing Prices Dive 18%; Housing Demand Slides 5% YoY
http://www.movoto.com/falls-church-va/market-trends/
http://www.zillow.com/local-info/VA-Falls-Church-home-value/r_4679/#metric=mt%3D30%26dt%3D1%26tp%3D4%26rt%3D8%26r%3D4679%252C244613%252C48809%252C244520%26el%3D0
Palm Beach, FL Housing Prices Dive 18 YoY On Rising Inventory
http://www.movoto.com/palm-beach-fl/market-trends/
Bethesda, MD Housing Prices Sink 13% YoY As Demand Turns South
http://www.movoto.com/bethesda-md/market-trends/
http://www.zillow.com/local-info/MD-Bethesda-home-value/r_37406/
Tyler, TX Housing Prices Collapse 30% YoY
http://www.movoto.com/tyler-tx/market-trends/
‘As you shop one of those super sales, back in your mind you’re wondering if late at night the stores increase base prices so you think you are getting a big discount. You aren’t being paranoid. There’s a phase for your suspicions. It’s called “price anchoring.”
‘It’s “the retail-world term for setting a high list price to anchor in a perception of value for a product,” writes Brad Tuttle of Time Magazine. “Because these anchor prices are often so high that almost no customers actually pay them, and because they exist mainly so that the inevitable sales and markdowns appear larger and more tempting, there’s another term frequently applied to the strategy: fake pricing.”
‘J.C. Penney was accused by a former employee of faking sale prices. In an interview with “The Today Show,” Bob Blatchford, who worked at Penney store in Florida, said the store intentionally marked up discounted items and then advertised them at lower prices.’
“I saw a lot of pricing teams going through the store, raising the prices, mostly doubling — towels and clothing,” Blatchford told NBC’s Jeff Rossen. “Then they would go on sale, and they wouldn’t always go on sale for 50 percent off. Not only was it a fake sale, but they were actually paying more than they would have been previously.”
Every fairer partner I’ve had for the past 40 years knew this was common.
What I really hate is a store that makes you join some kind of store club to get the “sale” price. I don’t like having my wallet stuffed with their barcoded cards.
Huntington Beach, CA Housing Prices Sink 6% YoY; Inventory Skyrockets 66% As Demand For Housing Craters
http://www.movoto.com/huntington-beach-ca/market-trends/
http://www.zillow.com/local-info/CA-Huntington-Beach-home-value/r_25218/
‘More so than any other graph in our collection, the image of the market for high end homes in Tallahassee provides a clear picture of the perilous tie between home sales and low mortgage interest rates. Our graph tracks all Leon County, Florida homes priced over $400,000 since the beginning of 1991, and it is clear that we went from sales in the teens to more than 500 in a single year during the height of the housing market bubble.’
‘To put that into perspective, sales of these high end homes rose 6517% from 1991 to 2005, and we now have an inventory of expensive homes that will require future buyers regardless of future mortgage interest rates. And therein lies a problem.’
‘Again, for more perspective, total home sales in Tallahassee from 1991 to 2005 grew by 112%, meaning we saw them better than double. Yet high end homes did not multiple by 2 like the rest of the market, they multiplied by 66! Are there really 66 new high end families living in Tallahassee today for every one that lived here in 1991?’
‘In 2013, there were fewer homes sold in Tallahassee than were sold in 1991, yet the luxury market was 2450% higher than in 1991.’
‘In 2013, there were fewer homes sold in Tallahassee than were sold in 1991, yet the luxury market was 2450% higher than in 1991.’
This one is like the black plague.
Lots of Boomers hauling in lots of bucks upon their parents’ deaths.
Sell Mummy and Daddy’s place for lotsa bucks, inherent lotsa 401K money and then live large because they earned it.
And lotsa empty houses hitting the market. 35 Million of them to be precise.
got a link on that 35 mill? up from 25 mill just last week
LOL….
C’mon out.
There are currently 25 million excess empty and defaulted houses and another 35 million are just beginning to trickle on the market as boomers expire.
You can see new condos near the FSU football stadium. I’ve been told that the intended market is wealthy alumni who would purchase the units as weekend retreats during home games in the fall.
I actually like driving some state roads around Tallahassee. Very postcard southern, with big overhanging trees and Spanish moss.
‘Local homebuyers complaining about the slim pickings amid one of the harshest winters in memory may finally have some more choices in Chicago, where the number of homes for sale has risen this month. In all, 9,969 homes in the six-county metropolitan area were newly listed for sale in the first two weeks of March, up 6.1 percent over the same period in 2013.’
“It’s really been non-stop the past few weeks,” said Karen Ranquist, an agent in the Lincoln Park office of Koenig & Strey Real Living. “I’m up late dealing with people who want to get listed.”
‘Because pricing a home depends so much on the prices of comparable properties, Ms. Ranquist said she has been counseling most new listers to hold off on one key detail until the last minute: price.’
“I have four new listings coming on,” she said, “and I’ve told all of them we don’t want to pick our price until right before we list, because every day there’s something coming on the market that (contributes) to our price point.”
‘Mr. Kasper and Ms. Ranquist both said the March increase may presage an even larger influx of new inventory in coming weeks. “You can see it in how busy the stagers and photographers are,” Ms. Ranquist said, referring to some of the vendors needed in the pre-listing weeks. “They don’t have any time to see your listing right now.”
‘There is no hard data, but apartment prices have risen in the last decade in Pyongyang and small cities on the Chinese border, defectors said. Housing now acts as a store of value for North Koreans looking for ways to earn money outside the poorly paid government sector, they added.’
‘Lee Yun-keol, a biologist who came to Seoul in 2005, said he had heard that an apartment he used to own in Pyongyang was worth $100,000, nearly 15 times what he paid more than a decade ago.’
I was thinking Cuba might be the only place on the planet without a housing bubble, because in Cuba you can’t buy or sell a house.
I was wrong.
http://www.business-opportunities.biz/2013/12/31/real-estate-boom-in-cuba/
Viva la revolucion! Viva la burbuja!
OT
http://finance.yahoo.com/echarts?s=NLR+Interactive#symbol=NLR;range=my
got nucs?
‘Fenghua, where about 500,000 people live surrounded by mountains south of Ningbo, typifies how the building boom has gone awry in China’s third- and fourth-tier cities. Today, the city is filled with pawn shops, textile and garment factories and an abundance of empty residential buildings meant to meet the needs of Chinese with rising incomes. About 67 percent of housing under construction in China last year was in less affluent cities like Fenghua.’
‘Ningbo, which has jurisdiction over the city, had inventory of 32 months at the end of February, compared with an average of about 15 months in 13 major cities. To slow the building frenzy, Ningbo imposed home purchase restrictions in 2011, banning local residents from buying third homes and limiting non-locals to purchasing one home.’
‘The oversupply of housing has caused some developers to cut prices in smaller cities. Agile Property Holdings Ltd. cut home prices at two projects in the eastern city of Changzhou and the western city of Chengdu by about 20 percent each in February and March, the company said.
‘Zhejiang Xingrun, the biggest developer in Fenghua, doesn’t have enough cash to repay creditors. The developer owes 2.4 billion yuan to banks, 700 million yuan to private lenders and the rest to construction companies, Xu Mengting, director of the news office at the Fenghua city government, said.’
‘The main reason the developer is insolvent is it “wasn’t run well,” Xu said. “Also, there may have been some impact from the land prices.”
‘The developer’s collapse does not point to widespread weaknesses in the Chinese real estate market, according to Andy Rothman, an investment strategist with Matthews Asia in San Francisco, which manages $24.9 billion.
He said he doesn’t see signs of a property bubble partly because urban income growth in China has outstripped the rise in home prices in the past eight years. He also said that Chinese buyers pay for homes either all in cash or with significant down payments, making the market very different from its counterpart in the U.S.’
“Is this the tip of the iceberg or a signal that there are serious problems in the Chinese real estate market? That seems highly unlikely,” Rothman said.’
On this:
‘banning local residents from buying third homes and limiting non-locals to purchasing one home’
Boy, that will stop ‘em.
‘In the 1980s, Australians were concerned about Japanese investment entering the country, and in particular real estate in Queensland, which culminated in the “Heart of the Nation” group on the Gold Coast that opposed the “Japanisation” of Australia.’
‘The Japanese government’s ill-conceived ideas, such as the “Silver Columbus 1992” which proposed to locate retirement villages in Australia, turned public opinion against Japanese investment. Newspapers like The Age accused Japanese investors of taking advantage of the weak dollar to buy up property and, in the process, dashing the hopes of aspiring Australian buyers.’
‘The Japanese didn’t colonise Queensland. Golf courses bought at the height of the speculative property bubble for $200 million were sold for a fraction of the original price tag at a leaner time…The most important lesson from the 1980s boom in Japanese investment is that the fear of a Japanese takeover of Queensland was misplaced. In fact, quite a few Australians benefited from overzealous Japanese investors who were happy to pay above market prices for properties.’
‘the days of arbitrary increases in the real estate market are gone,’ says Sissy Lappin, principal of Lappin Properties in Houston’
‘News about Houston’s housing market largely has been on the positive side as sales and prices have leapt to record levels. But some people are still struggling from issues left over from the recession.’
‘The number of Houston-area homeowners who owe more on their mortgages than their homes are worth fell to 36,875 in the last three months of 2013, a new report shows. That amounts to 3.8 percent of residential properties with a mortgage.’
fell to 36,875 in the last three months of 2013, a new report shows. That amounts to 3.8 percent of residential properties with a mortgage ??
I read that twice then did some quick math…Are their 0ne miilion homes with a mortgage in Houston ?? There is roughly 2 million people in Houston suggesting 1/2 have a mortgage…Eliminate all the children, twenty somethings, renters & seniors in retirement facilities I just can’t imagine the info above is accurate…
It’s one of those places where the actual city is dwarfed by the suburbs.
Oh okay Ben…I get it…
‘Many home buyers and sellers fall prey to the phenomenon of “money illusion,” says Lucy Ackert, professor of finance at Kennesaw State University in Kennesaw, Ga., who studied money illusion in residential real estate. In other words, homeowners who sell their home for a higher dollar amount than what they bought it for see themselves as coming out ahead—even if inflation eats the gains.’
“Homeowners don’t think in real terms. They think in nominal terms. Many people would prefer a situation where they have a real loss, than a real gain and nominal loss,” Prof. Ackert says.’
‘A housing bubble can be generated when people believe prices in the future will be higher, and are thus not worried about overpaying today. Prof. Ackert says money illusion alone won’t cause a housing bubble, but when coupled with tight supply, “that’s when you really run into trouble. It’s a perfect storm,” she says.’
This is where the hyperinflation myth becomes convenient.
^right?
Yeah, I got your St. Joseph statue right here.
Francis Wong Chan Tong
It is not possible for there to be “no limit for that demand”. Sorry, I don’t have the energy to explain this basic and obvious tenet of reality. Canadia is not different there, eh?
Cha-ching!!! I did not expect him to be this craven. This would make 3 speeches for a total of $800,000.
______________________________/
“Former Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke was booked for an intimate dinner Wednesday to address eight masters of the universe at Le Bernardin, we hear, including hedge funders David Einhorn, Louis Moore Bacon, Larry Robbins and Mike Novogratz.
Sources said Bernanke’s expected to make about the same $250,000 fee he commanded at a recent Abu Dhabi speech.
A spy said topics would include “the 2008 banking crisis, the current state of affairs in Washington and monetary policy” at the dinner hosted by trading firm BTIG, which was co-founded by former Goldman Sachs partner Steven Starker.
Bernanke will reportedly get another $300,000 for an upcoming talk in Turkey this year”
http://tinyurl.com/lwljs3x
“One Omaha husband-wife real estate team drops off custom packages to strangers they hope to nudge into moving.”
Strange money is dumb money.
“We’re seeing a lot of first-time home-buyer interest,” said Becker, regional sales manager of mortgage banking. “We’ve gone back to people that maybe didn’t qualify last year, revisiting with them to see if we may be able to help them.”
…to see if we may be able to help them.
“There is the habit of Cypriots to set a price for a property and refuse to sell for anything less even if there are no buyers at that price; the person would still claim that this was the value of the property. ”
Ah sunny, sunny Cyprus I miss you so much! The island not the idiots who inhabit it.