by ilene - September 8th, 2010 10:26 pm
Should You Buy a House Now?
By David Galland, Managing Editor, The Casey Report
Recently, we have had a number of queries about real estate. And no wonder. For starters, real estate prices have come down. Plus, in an environment with next to zero interest rates, the idea of possibly picking up some income-producing property on the cheap holds a certain appeal to some. Then there’s the fact that real estate is very much a “tangible” – and so should hold up reasonably well, should the fiat currency system come undone, as we expect it will before this crisis is over.
The following, from reader and correspondent Ross, considers the issue of home buying from an interesting angle.
My wife and I have been considering buying/building a house for a while now. After long months of searching, we have had to ask ourselves about the "value" of a home. I say this because my parents in 1972 purchased a 2, 000 sq/ft home for $20,000. That was almost exactly what my father made per year at his job at the time of purchase. Is this ratio one to consider as a prudent homebuyer not trying to live beyond his means? I make about $150,000 a year and can’t imagine purchasing a house here in Pittsburgh for that price and being happy with that purchase.
My parents sold their home in 2001 for $180,000, which is obviously 9 times what they paid for it. We are looking at homes in the low 300s to purchase, and I can’t imagine the sales price in 30 years being 9 times that price, which would be $2.7 million! So do you see my line of thinking?
Could hyperinflation cause the price to "appreciate" that same way over time? Is inflation what caused my parents home to return 9 times what they paid for it? The reason I wrote to you regarding this topic is that I thought maybe there was a future missive buried in this line of thinking. Maybe not, but if you have time I would love to hear your thoughts on home purchasing at this time.
In response, I have to point out the obvious, that all real estate markets are local. Simply, unless it’s a mobile home, you can’t pick your home up and move. So, for example, you could offer me a house in…
Tags: buying a house, Casey Report, housing markets, Mortgages, property taxes, Real Estate
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by ilene - February 10th, 2010 11:51 am
Courtesy of Mish
With pent-up housing demand headed for exhaustion, if not well past exhaustion already thanks to $10,000 tax credits for new buyers, the housing recovery is about to reverse.
Please consider Reversal of Fortune.
One in five housing markets entered a second leg of home price declines in late 2009, after showing price increases for nearly half of last year, according to a report released Wednesday by Zillow.com, a real-estate Web site.
In 29 of the 143 markets tracked by the site — including Boston, Atlanta and San Diego — prices flattened or began to decrease again in the second part of last year, after five or more months of consecutive monthly increases, according to the site’s fourth quarter real-estate market report.
Home prices in another 29 markets, including Los Angeles and New York, increased each month throughout the fourth quarter. But the rate of increase slowed from November to December in 21 markets, according to the data.
Nationwide, home values fell 5% in the fourth quarter compared with the fourth quarter a year earlier. Values fell 0.5% from the third quarter of 2009.
"While we have seen strong stabilization in home values during 2009, there are clear signs that they will turn more negative in the near-term," said Stan Humphries, Zillow’s chief economist, in a news release.
"What we saw in mid-2009 was a brief respite from a larger market correction that has not yet run its course," he said.
Still, Humphries said markets that see a "double dip" in values before reaching a bottom won’t see a return "to the magnitude of depreciation seen earlier." Instead, the drop will look like a "modest aftershock" of the initial drop in prices. In this scenario, a "double dip" is defined as two periods of sustained declines separated by a brief stabilization or recovery, according to the release.
Stabilization Misunderstood
It’s important not to make too much of stabilization. If you throw enough money at something, prices are bound to stabilize, at least for a while. However, eventually the pool of pent-up demand is exhausted, much like the pool of original fools was exhausted.
The shadow supply of homes is through the roof, rental prices are dropping, and there is no
…
Tags: double dip, housing markets, prices, Residential Real Estate, stabilization, the Federal Reserve, Zillow
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by ilene - December 30th, 2009 12:59 am
See also my recent interview with a real estate developer whose thoughts are similar to those expressed in Michael’s article below. - Ilene
Courtesy of Michael Panzner at Financial Armageddon
My friend George Ure, publisher of Urban Survival (and a related blog of the same name), as well as the Peoplenomics subscription newsletter, has posted an eye-opening commentary, "Coping: With What No One Wants To Say" (excerpted below), detailing industry insiders’ perspectives on what is really happening in the real estate market.
While the news that things aren’t getting any better in CRE and RRE won’t be much of a surprise to those who’ve actually been paying attention, it would seem to represent further evidence that the "experts" and powers that be in Washington and on Wall Street (along with their enablers in the mainstream media) are either liars, fools, or crack addicts — or some combination of all three:
Every so often, a group of major real estate developers get together for a conference where folks try to look ahead. In order to protect my source, I won’t tell you which real estate/developer conference it was, but I’ve been given permission by my source to post this high-level view of what the people who put up real dough to develop properties are seeing. This is the info that I talked about with Jeff Rense on his radio program last night — Read it and weep:
"This week I attended the [serious players] fall conference. [serious players] is the top real estate industry group in the world. All the most senior people in the industry.
1. Not one expert was willing to predict what things will look like in 3 years other than they think it will be better.
2. One top economist said if you are a developer find another career for the next 3 years-there is nothing to do and it may be 5 years.
3. Recovery will be slow. Unemployment will not drop back to more normal levels until 2014. First they will bring back people on 4 day weeks to 5 days, then they will increase hours form the
…
Tags: Commercial Real Estate, Economy, housing markets, Politics, Rating Agencies, real estate developers, real estate loans, Recession, unemployment, vacancies
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Philip R. Davis is a founder Phil's Stock World, a stock and options trading site that teaches the art of options trading to newcomers and devises advanced strategies for expert traders...
Ilene is editor and affiliate program
coordinator for PSW. She manages the site