Cheap Today, Cheaper Tomorrow?
“There is a great opportunity to purchase real estate today,” Wendy Silverstein, the executive vice president of capital markets at Vornado Realty Trust, said at the conference. “Unfortunately, if you buy property today, it will probably be cheaper tomorrow.” – TRD
They’re not that bad. They’re actually pretty good. But I don’t want people moving in who are as “afraid” of them as she seems to be. Miss Muffet, may I suggest an easy way for you to afford your private school tuition? RENT.
What’s wrong with the public schools in Prospect Heights?
I know a couple whose daughter attended public schools in Prospect Heights for her entire K-12 education.
Last year she was accepted to Yale.
How bad can they be?
Hi Ms Muffet,
I can understand some of your school district issues. That aside, since you’ve been looking, what have things actually been selling for? I only look at the real estate ads which and the impression of prices, of course, cannot be truly accurate. It IS interesting looking at the 6-months-later feature on this website though but these are only a sliver of the transactions going on out there. Aren’t things still changing hands? I assume things haven’t ground to a complete halt. I don’t know enough young people who are in the market to gauge what is going out out there.
dittoburg – Miss Muffett may be civil but it IS crazy how she repeats herself. I know you’re excited MM – I too am obsessing over the economy – but your constant nattering is starting to look a bit like mild OCD.
BrooklynGreene – much as we love Fort Greene and Prospect Heights, we have not looked very seriously at those neighborhoods since good public schools are one of our key criteria – private school is not an option for us. While it’s true the schools in those areas are starting to change, we fear it would not be quickly enough for us given ages of our kids. What I did notice (since we’ve literally been looking for many years, and started before we even had kids) is that prices in those neighborhoods rose even more quickly than Park Slope and thus, I don’t know if they are more vulnerable to a steeper decline. On the other hand, they were also probably significantly under-valued for many years.
Doesn’t it seem like prices have only dropped on places you don’t want? Or, the places you want haven’t seen price drops anywhere near what you expect? It’s possible that the desirable places will never be “cheap”. Barring divorce, death, relocation, unemployment, etc… the people who own these “better” places may just decide to stay where they are. Of course, there will always be crap for sale, but in NYC, even that’s expensive. Still. There may be “buyers” renting for 10+ years looking for a good deal.
come on z- everyone on here who vocied an opinion that prices would go down were written off as lunatics or “bitter renters” or invited to “dream on”. At least Miss Muffett is civil.
Z – I cannot tell you how many times we were told that our house budget just didn’t cut it when we were looking pre-crash, and had that confirmed repeatedly on this blog – if I so much as suggested that prices could come down, many people disdained such comments as ridiculous wishful thinking. The difference now is that, up until pretty recently, users on this blog were not required to adopt a handle so there is really no way to know if the users insisting prices could only go up were the same small group of gloaters or not.
ms muffett: I hear you and I did a similar sort of thing when I sold my co-op a few months back (that is set the asking price somewhat lower than what the realtor recommended so as to sell quickly). And I also have stayed in touch with my buyers and can’t thus far detect any frustration with the apartment or the price. Were i to try to sell now I also would be asking for less. But I guess my point is that there is nothing that any of us can do to predict with any accuracy how low the market is going and therefore to expect other people to see things the way you do and cut their prices down on what is likely the most valuable piece of property in their possession is barking up the wrong tree.