Housing Report: Broad and Deep Pain Across U.S.
An article this weekend in the Real Estate Journal (which, unlike its parent paper, is free online) told of widespread doom and gloom for the nation’s housing market. The article sites a recent report by Economy.com that predicts that prices will continue to slide for at least another couple years in roughly 100 metropolitan markets…
An article this weekend in the Real Estate Journal (which, unlike its parent paper, is free online) told of widespread doom and gloom for the nation’s housing market. The article sites a recent report by Economy.com that predicts that prices will continue to slide for at least another couple years in roughly 100 metropolitan markets across the country. The biggest risks lie in California and Florida, the report says. As for New York, the forecast is for a relatively benign decline of 3.5%. Elsewhere on the East Coast, Economy.com says that Boston has already bottomed out. The good news? The current downturn “so far looks more like a correction than a crash on a national scale.” A spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down.
Prices in 100 U.S. Cities Expected To Decline [Real Estate Journal]
Photo by sercasey
Who said renting and owning should cost the same? It shoudl not. Owning a home is an asset approach with related expenses of carrying…renting is an straight expense. If they are anywhere close together, something is majorly wrong.
3.5% decline in prices? yay, now i can afford a 362.25 sq foot apartment instead of a 350 sq foot apartment. what WILL we do with all that extra space?
no one cared much about jim cramer until he started acting like a retarded gorilla on tv. i would not put a lot of weight in his opinion.
that said, he knows more than me about anything finance related.
“At a fair price (fair for both buyer and seller) homes will sell in any market.”
I guess then we just have to determine “fair” – 3.5% decline does not seem fair, nor will it bring the rent/own costs much closer to balancing out. I would not listen to Jim Cramer. He’s been wrong before.
As someone who just sold a home in Florida (two days on the market, priced right at market prices), I think the change in the housing market is simple. Used to be you could overprice your piece of shit and some sucker would come along and buy it. Suckers are offcially out of the market and only serious buyers left.
At a fair price (fair for both buyer and seller) homes will sell in any market.
I’ve been following the housing stocks for the past year. Toll brothers, Pulte homes, Ryland. Take a look at these stocks. They have rallied dramatically in the last couple of months. The bottom for these stocks were all hit about 3 months ago.
Can their recent success signal a housing bottom?
Jim Cramer from “Mad Money” says that a housing rally is about to happen and I just saw Donald Trump on “Larry King’ say that real estate is a better investment than stocks right now.
I have my doubts about whether we’ve hit a bottom, but it’s hard to argue with the recent rally in housing stocks.
We’ll see.
3.5% ? How do you even measure 3.5% decline in markets like Brooklyn? Most of the properties are so different. Marginally inferior light fixtures can probably justify that…
The Staten Island Advance reports from New York. “Need more proof it’s a buyer’s market? How about getting a new car, money to pay closing costs or free home furnishings to go with your new house. They are not prizes in a game show, but the perks some new home builders are offering in the let’s-make-a-deal atmosphere that’s come with a softening real estate market and rising inventory.â€
“A free $15,000 Saturn Ion might be the most unique inducement as of late. Brokers marketing a 72-unit townhouse development in New Dorp thought giving a free new Saturn with each new house might attract ambivalent buyers. Some buyers didn’t even take the car, opting instead for $15,000 in closing costs or money toward home furnishings, said broker james Prendamano.â€
“Sweetening the pot is what a lot of builders who are trying to sell multiple units are doing in a changed market. Last summer, home builders also lost what had been a standard marketing tool over the years, the ability to offer buyers an eight-year tax abatement on new homes.â€
“‘Builders are trying to make up for the [loss of the] tax abatement program, which didn’t exist for resale homes,’ said (realtor) Neil Litvin in Dongan Hills. ‘If one builder has some homes that have a tax abatement and another doesn’t, the second builder has to do something to make his homes more appealing to the buyer.’â€
“Litvin said builders such as Dora Homes and the Biadon Group are offering to pay down the interest rate on mortgages, or paying $15,000 in closing costs and throwing in upgrades such as more expensive granite countertops when it comes to marketing the custom detached colonials.â€
“The Advance reported last month that home sales dropped 16 percent and housing inventory rose 25 percent, according to figures from the Staten Island Board of Realtors.â€
If you really want to get a case of the heeby-jeebies, go to the url on the “for sale” sign in the picture. It’s a blog of a twenty something who’s gotten into enormous debt flipping houses in California.