Open House Picks: Six Months Later
Comment: Still not much to celebrate. Open House Picks 3/13/09 [Brownstoner] Previous Six Months Later Posts [Brownstoner]
Comment: Still not much to celebrate.
Open House Picks 3/13/09 [Brownstoner]
Previous Six Months Later Posts [Brownstoner]
I am really really sorry I missed this round…
Its a shame. Bankers are expecting big bonuses again because of all the TARP money that they received. They are using the money to buy houses and driving up NYC real estate prices farther beyond the reach of every day hard working families/tax payers in NY. These ordinary folks who pay taxes are basically subsidizing the bonuses of these bankers and the bankers are hurting the chances of (the ordinary tax payers) ever owning an affordable home.
Kissifer – congratulations! If you love your home, and you can afford it, don’t let all this market talk stress you. $360/sf certainly sounds like a pretty reasonable price (though I don’t really know the market in Harlem). Enjoy your purchase!
Well…what an interesting discussion. I wish I had found this web site earlier. We signed contracts a couple of days ago for a brownstone duplex on W. 122nd st. close to 7th ave. The price worked out to be around $360 sq. ft. I’m happy with it, but admittedly so nervous about where things will be 6 months from now 🙂 I have spent the past 6 months watching prices drop on Natefind and at last we saved enough money to put a down payment on a home. It has taken a good 2 years to reach this point and I guess I am one of those people who just wants a place to call home. Anyways, starting to ramble…but I suppose my point is it is a dream come true to even come up with the down payment at last for a home with a decent amount of space. I think that is all people are looking for. Affordable and reasonable…not necessarily for the city to go broke.
Oh, the ironic thing is we paid pretty much close to asking. Hope I don’t live to regret it 😉
Best of luck to all of you!
And Kris, your suggestion that prices staying high is “no big whoop” is inaccurate too. I can’t tell you how many people I know find housing costs to be the single biggest stress of living in NYC. Just as you say many thousands of homeowners may suffer from the stress of being underwater if prices decline further, so too must one consider the other side of the coin: that the high prices of the bubble years created huge stress for many, many hard-working New Yorkers who, increasingly, could not afford to live here, even if this is where they had the best chance of finding work. There is truth in both sides of the argument, and it’s as wrong to dismissively caricature those hoping for a correction as it is to fail to acknowledge that yes, a correction will cause pain for some.
Kris – this really is treading well worn ground, but again, those hoping for further declines are not necessarily “cheering for the financial ruin” of many people. It all depends on your perspective – during the run-up, many people were evicted, priced out, or convinced that it was a good idea to spend an inordinate proportion of their income on housing. To hope for a correction benefits many people too. There are always winners and losers. I don’t belittle the suffering of those unlucky recent buyers who got in over their heads and have to sell at a loss, but I think they are (hopefully) a small percentage of the market. It is also hard to feel sorry for many other owners who have to reap a more modest profit now instead of the killing they would have made during the peak – in many, many cases, they can still make out quite nicely, even at prices 50% off from peak.
Free only if you ignore the opportunity costs of your money, and if you’re not underwater on the house, and on and on. Nothing is “free.”
“This bubble however was much bigger and economy/unemployment far worse so it might take 15-20 years from now before a bottom. It sounds crazy but this is how RE works. The longer a buyer waits the better.”
I like that, so if I am in the market for a house, I should wait twenty years? I could pay off a 15 year mortgage and live five years for free.
Posted by: denton at September 11, 2009 3:44 PM
denton, half these people can’t figure that out.
For those of you cheering on a new bubble, or maybe just the old one, you’re cheering on malinvestment, household and national balance sheet mismanagement, and the withholding of a normal middle class way of life from millions of hardworking would-be homeowners.
Yes, Goldman bonuses will be huge this year. They’re playing the Bernanke put to perfection. Shame on them.
Dave, you’ve called a Jan 1 bottom in BK RE? If prices are higher on June 1, I’ll buy you a bottle of Haut Brion.