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eburbed,
Low inventory with low sales suggests sellers who are holding out until the market stops being 'soft.'
Some people who don't have to sell their homes would rather wait until their house is worth whatever it was at the 'peak' before they sell because they have already mentally accepted the peak price as what their house is 'worth', and so selling now means 'losing' that money that was never really there in the first place. If they really don't need to sell, but were thinking about it to 'change houses' or something, they will represent the 'sticky' side of pricing. The houses that would have been on the market if it hadn't turned soft.
Any above water seller that really needs to sell their place, but is holding out for peak prices is really playing chicken with the buyers. Hoping the market will improve soon enough for him to unload the house, he'll hold out until 'panic' sets in for the whole market or until he absolutely cannot avoid selling anymore. These people include job transfers, estates, etc. These are the 'slow lister' types. They may be on the market, but overpriced, and many will 'chase the prices down,' at least for awhile.
Now... the FBs are going to hit the market with forclosures. If they sell, they'll realize their horrible losses. Sooner or later they're going to be in pain.
I sure hope he did not buy many investment properties with I/O loans.
I hope he did. Live by the sword, die by the sword. I'd be more disgusted with a Realtor who knew it was a bubble and happily sold people down the stream, saving up their commission checks to get in on the foreclosure action in the next 5 years.
Newsfreak,
I agree that holdouts that NEED to sell are doing the wrong thing right now. I'm just speculating as to why there hasn't been a lot of 'spring listings' and what might be motivating some sellers right now.
FAB says:
What I can’t figure out is how people who were not able to save a penny while renting think they can somehow afford to buy a home with no money down paying more each month than they were paying while renting…
That's silly. Obviously, they managed to make regular, reliable weekly payments while they were renting to keep a landlord happy. I don't see they have to prove they can scrape together a 20% deposit just to keep the banks happy. I don't see why housing can't be brought into line so that it is affordable at the same rates that people are currently paying for rents. a la 'rent to buy' or shared equity schemes.
I still don’t see any right to home “ownershipâ€. I can understand a right to housing, so people have a roof over their head, though I don’t even like that kind of government intrusion into the market place.
hmmm, spoken like a true progressive liberal... markets are still god, even if they double the price of entry overnight...
DS, you are still invited to join our club of small-L libertarians. :)
FAB says:
Most people that have not been hard working and responsible enough to save up a down payment are not hard working and responsible enough to own a home…
I still don't agree. If a median priced home is $500K, the banks now expect you to have saved $100K deposit to cover the BANK's ass. A decade ago, the requirement would have been half relative to earnings.
Not many Gen Y's I know can save that sort of money, particularly if they are in the rent trap, where much of their income is going into rent, leaving very little for savings. Besides, the cost of serving a loan twice as large as their parents had will be the next hurdle. The best off people under these circumstances are southern Europeans and similar who group together as a family to pay off a place before sending their kids into the harsh wide world, unlike the north-west European neolocal settlement small nuclear family model...
Travelling (and enrolling) are English spellings, as any well-travelled person would know. England is not just the home of Morgans and Aston-Martins you know...
the lowliest peasant in Vietnam can afford their own dwelling, by the way. of course, it may be a relatively humble abode...
England is not just the home of Morgans and Aston-Martins you know…
How about cucumber sandwiches, scones, and devonshire cream?
my family used to own a scone mine in the yorkshire dales, with a cream well nearby...
yes, scones are mined mostly in the yorkshire dales (like welsh slate comes from wales) and geologically, where there are scones in the ground, huge underground cream reserves are usually found nearby...
Peter P Says:
DS, you are still invited to join our club of small-L libertarians.
hmm, OK, I haven't been to a satan-worshipping orgy in a while... altho they just deprogrammed me out of scientology, and my head still buzzes occasionally...
Still, 4,985 homes on the market seems kind of low…
Maybe, but at least compared to this time last year according the the same site, there were only 4,381 homes inventory on 4/2/06 (a week later into the "Spring Season" yet).
hmm, OK, I haven’t been to a satan-worshipping orgy in a while… altho they just deprogrammed me out of scientology, and my head still buzzes occasionally…
Libertarians are very passionate people.
Sen Christopher Dodd seems to have gotten the message about the idiocy of bailing out the subprime FBs:
http://money.cnn.com/2007/03/26/real_estate/Dodd/index.htm?postversion=2007032618
Maybe our emails to him (along with others) actually made a difference!!??!!
newsfreak Says:
I did want to mention, I saw a t-shirt–
THINK
It is still legal
Isn't it THINKâ„¢ -- and it's only legal with the written agreement of IBM -- you implicitly obtain the right after you buy one of their fine products...
the lowliest peasant in Vietnam can afford their own dwelling, by the way. of course, it may be a relatively humble abode…
Would it look like this?
Would it look like this?
funnily enough, very similar...
however, that house has a superior 6-panel door at the side (which might be the front).
DS,
The day when American Progressives decide to ask your opinion about the definition of progressivism, will be the day that I join the Satan worshipping party of something that falls short of DS's definition of progressive liberalism.
That's my last word on this matter.
DS,
LOL! Thank you very much for the offer, but I'm investigating renewable alternative to mined scone. However, I am very interested in the cream well.
DS,
LOL! Thank you very much for the offer, but I'm investigating renewable alternative to mined scone. However, I am very interested in the cream well.
DS says: the lowliest peasant in Vietnam can afford their own dwelling, by the way. of course, it may be a relatively humble abode…
And the lowliest American can afford a home in Flint, Michigan or Upper Left Buttcheek, Texas. Don't extrapolate the Bay Area to the vast rest of the United States. The lowliest peasant in Vietnam is not equivalent to an Electrical Engineer with a Master's degree working in Silicon Valley.
hmm, very Freudian...
My family also hoped to find a rich seam of jam on the property and brought in a jam dowser, but alas, to no avail.
I can sell you shares in a scone mine, astrid…
They're not making any more scone mines. Don't be priced out forever!
(BTW, are they scones as in ice cream cones, or scones as in yawns?)
And the lowliest American can afford a home in Flint, Michigan or Upper Left Buttcheek, Texas.
Let's only hope...
Don’t extrapolate the Bay Area to the vast rest of the United States.
Perish the thought. Who would dare. Further, it was generous of the Mexicans to surrender the Bay Area to Anglo settlers, not to mention generous of the indigenous people to surrender the whole continent to same, in order to parcel it up into land titles.
The lowliest peasant in Vietnam is not equivalent to an Electrical Engineer with a Master’s degree working in Silicon Valley.
So the peasant is getting a better deal from his or her society?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scone_%28bread%29
According to Merriam-Webster, the word scone derives perhaps from the Dutch schoonbrood (fine white bread), from schoon (pure, clean) and brood (bread). The scone closely resembles a North American biscuit (many recipes are, in fact, identical) — itself not to be confused with the English biscuit, which equates to the American cookie. In the United States, there is a growing tendency to refer to sweet variations as "scones" (perhaps under influence from espresso bars, where they are popular fare), while savory ones are known as "biscuits".
amazing
More Gawker NYT Wedding section scoring. I find this endlessly fascinating, though none of these people beat skibum's wedding announcement (a belated mazel tov to you crazy overachieving kids!).
"@RaiderJeff
Thats good news!
THe same thing has happend in Moorpark,CA (ventura county) and the builders are not budging either."
Really? I guess this is just another sign of things to come.
"Do these people picket Walmart every week everytime they ‘lower prices’ on crap they already bought?!?"
Exactly, that's what some other posters said about this story on the other blog. The general consensus among the poster was - too f'n bad, you didn't do due diligence, you deserve this.
"Perhaps there will be a new ballot initiative in CA making it illegal to sell a house for less than the comps sold for….that would be pass EZ here in Communiforna."
The builders would have a fit. Could you imagine telling William Lyons that they can't lower their prices/give incentives in order to unload their inventory.
More OTness. I'm still alive. My sourdough is a success! These taste better than any bread I've ever paid for. Ignoring time and labor and electricity, they come out to cost about 25 cents a loaf.
Different Sean says: Perish the thought [of extrapolating a peasant to an engineer]. Who would dare. Further, it was generous of the Mexicans to surrender the Bay Area to Anglo settlers, not to mention generous of the indigenous people to surrender the whole continent to same, in order to parcel it up into land titles.
It was awfully nice of the Aborigines to surrender Australia to the British as well. What's that got to do with housing affordability for peasants?
The lowliest peasant in Vietnam is not equivalent to an Electrical Engineer with a Master’s degree working in Silicon Valley.
So the peasant is getting a better deal from his or her society?
I would probably rather live in a modest single family home in Flint, Michigan than in a hut in Vietnam. I am biased towards first world countries, of course. I like potable water, good medical care and a passable education system.
Anyway, I think you missed my point. Rural areas are massively less expensive than cities. To further strain any comparison, San Francisco is in the top 10 most expensive cities worldwide. Could your average blue collar guy afford a house in San Fran? Probably not. But I bet most peasants in Vietnam couldn't afford a 2500 sq.ft. in Hanoi, either.
Vietnamese culture does have one thing going for it in terms of housing. Many generations live under the same roof, and their idea of required personal space is much reduced compared to North America, Europe and Australia. Maybe if they were Americans, they could afford a house in the Bay Area simply by housing 10 people in the same modest house.
Brand,
Don't be ridiculous, I have a Constitutional right to a Viking convection oven (with steam injection for bread baking), walk in Subzero fridges, and at least 500 sq ft of personal bathroom space.
"Wow, RJ, that’s a not surprising but still fascinating situation that seems to be occuring quite a bit these days.
As for those protesters, it’s a mix of sad and pathetic. You feel for them because they’re about to get hit hard. You wonder if their actions are desperation, selfishness or both. But expecting the developer to pay because the market turned? Because the salesperson “sold†them a house? WTF are they thinking?"
WTF indeed. I have no sympathy for this guy. Bob (or boob) didn't read his contract. Bob didn't do his homework. Bob took the word of a sales rep from Willaim Lyons. Bob is S.O.L.
While making a promise that prices would not drop without any real intention of standing behind that promise seems unethical, and possibly serves as a cause of action for negligent misrepresentation, Bob has to realize who he's dealing with. The good people of William Lyons couldn't give two shits about what was said outside of the contract and the deed, or what "puffery" was used to make the sale. Bob should have realized this before going into the deal. So sorry Bob, but no soup for you.
at least 500 sq ft of personal bathroom space.
Make that 2000 sq ft. :)
More OT: I just received my new used laptop. It looked like new. Not bad for less than $600.
This HP link has a lot of other good deals.
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COLDWELL BANKER® ENTRANCE INTO SECOND LIFE® MAKES VIRTUAL HOMEOWNERSHIP EASIER FOR MILLIONS OF RESIDENTS
Company Leads Real Estate Industry Into Virtual Future
(link)
This is in the give me a f*#!ng break category. All the zaniness in the "virtual worlds" space is a subject I've purposefully kept separate from Patrick.net until now. But this crosses the line for me. As if we don't have a big enough headache with the *real* real estate bubble, along with all its hype, mania, collusion, greed, corruption and now economic fallout, now we get to legitimize a whole *pretend* real estate bubble. And in case you think this is some irrelevant, minor fringe element bear in mind this particular virtual world claims over 4,000,000 current residents and is growing at over 30% per month.
For anyone lucky enough to have not been exposed, the short version is:
Ok, so I took this whole issue on, called out what I saw as a type of Ponzi pyramid scheme, and roundly got ripped up by cult Second Life's love hype machine. You can find my articles here (main one that started it all), here, here, and here. There is also a lawsuit (the real kind, not the pretend computer cartoon kind), Bragg v Linden in which my first two articles above have been submitted to the court in a revised complain[t]
statement. The case is a dispute over -- you guessed again -- Virtual Real Estate!If nothing else, I thought this might make a nice weekend distraction for everyone before we get back to the *real* RE bubble next week.
--Randy H
PS. If you really want to ruffle some academic and fanbois feathers, you can go join the discussion on the "Ivory Tower" blog that covers virtual worlds stuff here.
#housing