Open House Picks: Six Months Later 8/3/07
Comment: The broker for the Crown Heights house says the listing has been temporarily pulled while C of O issues are sorted out. All the rest did pretty well, it seems. Open House Picks, 8/3/07 [Brownstoner]
Comment: The broker for the Crown Heights house says the listing has been temporarily pulled while C of O issues are sorted out. All the rest did pretty well, it seems.
Open House Picks, 8/3/07 [Brownstoner]
good market/bad market only matters to first time buyers. a bad market actually HELPS people trading up.
btw, I think this feature and I look forward the the posts that say “well, yeah, this was JUST BEFORE the market slow down”. They’ve been saying that for 18 months now on the “just closed” feature.
“1:39 – someone quoting Suze Orman as gospel has no right to refer to anyone as an “idiot.” Pot, kettle, all that.”
Why is that? Because you know more about personal finance than highly successful best selling author with her own radio and tv programs???
in 2 wweks, ING will be 3%.
they have a lag time of about 2 weeks when the interest rates are lowered.
and there’s another cut on the way next week.
by the middle of feb. ING will be in the neighborhood of 2.5% interest.
wish it weren’t so. i LOVE ING. they make saving money FUN!
1. I don’t believe prices are going up again for a while. That said, the whole argument that, “Well, yeah, this house sold for a bundle, but that was three months ago, and just you wait, it’s all gonna hit the fan…”? I’ve been reading that here for three years at least, over and over again.
2. All the people who get so cheesed that people spend big $$$ on little South Slope/Gowanus houses when they could buy a giant brownstone in [your neighborhood here]–they’re probably having an aneurysm over the 14th Street house.
LOL ka-chingo ka-chingo I love it
1:39 – someone quoting Suze Orman as gospel has no right to refer to anyone as an “idiot.” Pot, kettle, all that.
Even if returns on cash are low over the medium term, they at least won’t be negative. And liquidity is very important for some people right now, esp. younger folks at banks whose job security is essentially non-existant.
Well, I own a large apt in a prime area but am looking to buy a house, and we do have a chunk of cash we’re sitting on that we would use for the trade-up. Our position is that we’re looking actively, and if the right place came up right now, we would seriously consider buying. But we also don’t feel in a huge rush. Even if the interest rates dip, you can still get over 4% at ING and I seriously doubt there’s going to be a huge run-up in house prices in the next year or so the way there was in the last 5. I don’t think buyers should totally wait it out (yes, you need a place to live so if you find the right one, buy) but I also think they don’t need to rush. I also think that, while some houses are selling, others are not, and there are definitely some overpriced properties out there. I think this feature is interesting since I do wonder if, 3-6-9 months for now (the housing market is notoriously slow to respond to other economic issues, and NYC has been an exception up til now, but recently even Bloomberg is conceding trouble may lie ahead), we may see some stagnation/declines…
the rise of interest rates takes YEARS, 1:52.
we were down to less than 2% in 2001 and it has only just gotten back up to around 4.50% for the average savings account.
by the time your scenario plays out (if it plays out) home prices will be back on track to earn more than 2 or 3% a year.
especially in nyc.
come on now.
“Interest rates falling means your money market and savings accounts will be earning less than 2% interest in the coming months.”
Maybe short term but if this recession turns into a depression, or if the FED decides to sharply raise interest rates to combat inflation (when they realize dropping them does little for the economic crisis like Japan circa 1980’s/1990’s), we will have a deflationary spiral that will rebound the dollar. In that case, even dollars in a mattress will appreciate in value. Don’t sleep on the dollar.
1:36 – I am not disputing the starting date of the credit crisis. But what you seem to have missed while hiding in your naively optimistic little cave is that things have gotten MUCH WORSE since then. I never claimed two months ago that the NYC real estate market would collapse, much less immediately. I only said there was a risk of a decline in property values over the medium term. That risk is still there and if anything is higher than it was two months ago.
Look, real estate markets (esp in the land of the $700k one bedroom) are all about confidence. In July, people thought the credit crisis would all be over by the end of the summer. In September, they thought it would end with 2007. But now? It’s finally set in that we are in for a long period of little to no growth. I’d also note that wall street layoffs are really just now starting to eat significantly into non-real estate related businesses. Will the NYC real estate market tank? I hope not. But it is rational and likely that many potential buyers will sit on the sidelines for a while.
So the question is – are you really naive enough to think that the fact that a couple of houses sold in September proves that everything is going to be fine for NYC real estate? If you are I truly feel sorry for you.