Watchhttp://money.cnn.com/2012/02/22/real_estate/home_sales/index.htm
Now in some areas prices might still have 5% to 10% to go, but on the average, we're probably more or less at the bottom. Prices may move slightly (+/- 1.5%) up or down month to month from here on out, but from my take on the available data, the days of large year over year price drops are over.
Just my two cents.
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robertoaribas says
They way people like you behave today, those same people, your grandma and grandpa, were to do the same thing today, they would basically live under a slumlord for their entire lives, and their kids and grandkids would be destitute.
The USA has been destroyed by the rentier class.
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Realtors Are Liars says
That's assuminig we ever get back to 1996 interest rates. Would the Fed allow it? Too many banksters lose if interest rates rise.
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Realtors Are Liars says
Not in my area. Prices are back to pre-2001, with current interest rates mortgage payments are way less than rent. Even at 120% LTV on my house my mortgage payment is less than rents in my area for most apartments. And I live in the Bay Area (although not the REAL Bay Area, lol )
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Egg Harbor City, NJ
Realtors Are Liars says
But how long will it take to reach your 1996 price level? 2 years? 4? 6? If your renting for $1775 a month, in a year your spending $21,300 in rent, 2 years $42,600, 4 years $85,200 and so on. I looked at a housing price chart, for median-priced house adjusted for inflation were 150k in 1996, they are around 175k right now. So your going to wait out the market to save another 25k when you spending 21k a year doing it? Unless your living in a cave (or your parents) rent free, it make absolutely Zero sense to wait. Your far better off to buy NOW even with the depreciation hit.
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bmwman91 says
I can't claim to be any expert in San Fransisco real estate market, but you can get a 2 bedroom, 2 bathroom 2,600 sq ft house for about 600k. It order for it to make more sense to continue renting the house would have to lose 3.5% value a year to break even the first year, 3.6% the second, 3.7% the third year to break even on rent vs. deprecation.
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Tude says
You can't just compare you rent payment to your mortgage payment like you are doing. There are expenses to owning a home that sometimes dwarfs the mortgage payment. Property tax, insurance, maintenance, principal appreciation/depreciation if any, the lose of investment returns from your downpayment, just to name a few. Come on people, this is you frigging life savings. At least do the correct math, and stop doing crap comparisons.
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Egg Harbor City, NJ
Realtors Are Liars says
You are absolutely correct, price are falling, I do not dispute this fact.
Realtors may be liars but you sir seem like a fool. Can you enlighten me where my my logic is flawed?
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TechGromit says
This is absolutely incorrect. Just use the rent-vs-buy calculator on this site rather than guessing. 600K purchase verses 1775/mth. Not even close - continuing renting! Don't become a slave to the seller and the bank. 600k is equivalent to about a 3500-4000/mth rent payment. Do the math if you don't believe me.
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RentingForHalfTheCost says
Of course they are not the same, but my entire point is to NOT buy a house because the house is going to continue to depreciate is just insane. The decreasing amount of depreciation vs the higher amount what your paying in rent more than offsets what saving by waiting.
I guess the assumption I have here is everyone here WANTS to buy a house at some point. If you want to be a renter forever, then why are you here, what difference does it make how much houses cost because your renting forever anyway.
Yes in most cases houses WILL cost more to own then to rent. But at some point the house will be paid off and the cost of living will drop considerably. You will always have a rent payment.
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TechGromit says
It's batshit crazy to pay that kind of money for that size of a house. Unless its on the beach in Hawaii. Or unless the walls are covered in gold foil.
Quit making bankers rich. And if you've got $600k cash to blow, put it in Canadian and/or Aussie dollars and earn interest until the next big financial meltdown lets you buy up assets on the cheap.
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Egg Harbor City, NJ
Realtors Are Liars says
You logic is circular. You sound like a broken record repeating the same thing without explaining why. Congratuations, your the third to make my Ignore list. Good Bye.
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San Francisco, CA
TechGromit says
I'm not completely sure, because I don't quite understand what you're illustrating, but I think the mathmatical flaw you made here is that you're representing the loss/gain as a linear function by incrementing 0.1% per year, when the bulk of the math involved with comparing two types of spending money with interest involve the exponential characteristic of compound growth/loss. Try the calculators here at patrick.net or at nytimes. They do this for you and allow you to plug numbers for varying parts of the comparison.
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RentingForHalfTheCost says
I know all the expenses, I have owned a home for nearly 10 years. My PITI comes to less than I would pay for rent, before any tax deductions. I also have the ability to do as I see fit in my home (we have animals). We have also done work to make the home super energy efficient, reducing our PG&E bill to less than $50 a month.
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FunTime says
What I was illustrating was if your spending 20k on rent, in order for you come out ahead by waiting for the house to depricate, the 600k house have to fall 3.5% in price the first year. So in 1 year the house would have to cost less then 580k to make the waiting worth it when you paying 20k in rent. Now assuming the house is now 580k, the amount deprication would have to be ever greater to equal or exceed 20k in rent. It's roughly 3.6% the end year, now the house is 560k, you need a 3.7% deprecation the third year to equal 20k in rent and so on.
Yes i'm completely aware that the mortgage, taxes, upkeep, etc on a 600k or even 580k house is far higher than the $1,775 rent. Everyone is saying wait prices will continue to depricate, so my assumtion is everyone is going to buy at some point, basing when your going to buy solely on deprication isn't a good statagy in my opinion. There are other reasons to wait, for example you don't have 20% saved yet for a good down payment, but waiting on prices to fall further should no longer be one of them based on the agruement I laid out.
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San Francisco, CA
TechGromit says
Ahh, thanks. That helped me understand what you're saying a lot better. I'm still a little confused. You seem to be applying a popular idea which suggests that all the money spent on rent is lost and all the money spent on a house is gained. So you're showing that the market value of the house must go down in order for renting to make sense. That isn't the case if that's what you're saying. You'll be spending money in both cases, so you'll always be losing some money independent of the value of the house. The question posed by the calculators is, "How do the gains compare?" If the market value of a house is depreciating, it's really difficult to find cases where you're not better off renting. Because of the ways markets were played with investment securities, like CDOs, sold by investment firms such as those represented on Wall Street, it has rarely made sense to buy in the Bay Area because renting is so much less expensive.
Have you played with the calculators? It's kind of fun to just plug in ridiculous numbers to start observing the dynamics of the situation and then try to make them more reasonable and connected to your case/life.
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TechGromit says
Assuming no appreciation/depreciation in your calculation it still is suffice to say that renting for 1775/mth is much much better than buying for 600k. Plug in the numbers and play with the assumptions.
My assumptions:
- no price movement on the house at all! (very optimistic IMHO)
- 4% for you mortgage rate (assuming a perfect credit score),
- that you are like the average and sell in 7 years,
etc.
The finally verdict is you would be about 150K poorer to buy verses rent. Not even close.
http://patrick.net/housing/calculator.php?uaddr=%2C+&rent=1%2C775&price=600%2C000
If you change the assumption to a 3% annual house price appreciation then renting or owning are basically equivalent over a 7 year period. That used to be possible and if you think it still is, then buy. I don't
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FunTime says
No really, When you rent you money is lost. When you buy a house and it deprecates in value you also lose money. (well not actaully lose unless you try to sell) The question is which one loses more money at this point in the market.
Many people were smart to wait on buying houses from the peak. When houses were depricating 10 or 20% a year from 400k, the houses were losing between 40k to 80k a year in value, far more than what it cost to rent. Now that houses are down to the 150k or less range and losing value at a much slower rate, 2 or 3% a year, what your paying it rent is far more than the house is losing in value. So to base when your going to buy solely when the market bottoms doesn't make sense since your losing less money in the long run by buying instead of renting.
FunTime says
What I'm really interested in is how the loses compare, which one lost more by waiting.
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TechGromit says
You are always renting. You either rent a house or rent money. If you have the full cash then you are stealing from your investment growth so in effect renting money from yourself. No one really owns. Everything has a cost you pay for whatever privilege you are getting.
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San Francisco, CA
TechGromit says
Plus interest. That's the real killer there.
Agreed that rental money is lost although, of course, you still got to live in a certain place for a certain time which is sometimes lost in discussions.
In some cases, when you compare the monthly rent with monthly cost to buy, there is a big difference and the rent payment is much less. So that gives a person room to do something else with that difference. So that difference opportunity is also figured into the calculations, but I didn't see where when I just peeked at the patrick.net calc.
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RentingForHalfTheCost says
Basically true. It cost money to exist, weather your homeless, renting an apartment or own a mansion. But when you buy, you have the opputunity to lower your expenses eventaully. We'll take my first house as a good example. I paid 90k for my first house total expenses $800 a month for mortgage, taxes and insurnace. We'll assume upkeep of $200 a month to keep things simple. The same house would cost about $1000 to rent at that time. In 30 years my living expenses would drop to to somewhere around $500 a month, no mortage, but higher taxes, same upkeep, your rent will proably be $1,500 a month by then. Total cost over the course of my life to "live" $288,000 in housing expenses with a mortgage for 30 years and say I live another 30 years at $500 a month, $180,000, grand total for me to exist $468,000. If I had rented however, say $1,000 a month rent for the first 30 and $1,500 for the next 30, so thats $360k + $540k = $900,000. in the long run, buying would be cheaper in this case.
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Realtors Are Liars says
How about $550k houses falling to $240K, this is just ONE listing in a perfectly nice area listed today. There are dozens of examples. Same can be said about other areas of the Bay Area.
http://www.redfin.com/CA/Pinole/2872-Ruff-Ave-94564/home/1045679
In my neighborhood there are homes that sold for $450-$550k now in the 200k range +/-
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Egg Harbor City, NJ
FunTime says
Yes I'm aware of the theory. You you spend less on rent then you pay in a mortgage, you can take the difference and invest it earning lots and lots of money in the stock market. The problem is very few people do. They extra money ends up getting spent on an extra starbucks latte or those sexy jeans. Statically homeowners have greater wealth then renters, so while renters do have more disposiable income than homeowners, typcially they are not investing it, otherwise they would be more wealthy then homeowners. You could argue that renters have a better life cause they afford to buy that extra cup of starbucks latte or buy those jeans instead of going without, but they are certainly not wealther in the long run.
Source: http://www.thedanielsgroup.com/homeowners-do-save-more-than-renters
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Corning, NY
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RentingForHalfTheCost says
Bingo.
You think you "own" your house? Try missing a property tax payment.
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The only people who "own" are the elite banking class, who own everyone's labor.
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Mountain View, CA
bmwman91's website
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TechGromit says
It definitely depends on the area. Around Mountain View, a 2600SF house will be, at a minimum, $1.2M. It is absolutely outrageous, and renting in this area is vastly cheaper than buying. Condos around here are sort of approaching rental parity thanks to rents shooting up, but buying a condo has never made any sense to me. They have all of the downsides that apartments do, for the same or slightly higher cost (and the HOA can nail you with assessments at any time). So you can paint the walls...yeah, great selling point!
I am perfectly fine giving up some of the conveniences of having my own house to save all of the money I am not spending on one (rather than blowing it on consumer goods), and to keep my 5 minute bike commute. Eventually my fiancee and I will buy because I want a garage for woodworking and car projects. I do not plan to go into it with any expectation of using the house as some sort of financial instrument because primary residences, long term, are lousy investments. Buying properties & renting them out can generate decent income, but that is a different scenario. I want to buy a house, live in it & pay it off and then have a nice low, fixed living cost for when I am old.
We have the cash to put 20% down on a $900k house right now. However, that is just too much money to spend on a house in our opinion because of the property tax liability, and all of the money that would be tied up in interest and taxes instead if being put into our retirement funds. Around here, the kinds of houses we are looking for basically start at $900k (2-3BR, 1200-1600SF, 40+ years old). We have a hard cap set at $500k, and we will likely move out of Mountain View to San Jose / Campbell after prices slide a bit more there.
Unless prices implode for some reason, we aren't really going to care if the house slides down in price a little after we buy it. At that point, it will make more long term sense to make payments on a slowly depreciating house than to rent since renting will lead to more wasted money than the house. For now though, renting sure as hell is cheaper, and we are saving every penny of the difference so that we don't have to borrow any more than we absolutely have to.
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TechGromit says
In many markets yes, but over here in South Orange county the taxes and HOA alone are $800-1000/month (2% property and mello roos and about $300 HOA). Then add the mortgage payment for a $350,000 home (starter 1600sqft 3bd/2ba condo) with a $70,000 downpayment, add in maintenance, add in extra emergency cushion etc. and it's still a very pricey proposition...especially since incomes are falling in this area.
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Pleasanton, CA
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It is a bottom alright! A bottomless pit.
---- taken from the link below
I asked Yale economist Robert Shiller -- of S&P/Case-Shiller housing index fame -- that question in an exclusive interview earlier this month. His answer might shock you: Not only do home prices, on average, not produce real returns over time, but history shows they could actually decline over the long haul
----
What many of us have been saying all along. Momentum is a bitch. Go ahead, argue with a Yale economist. Use your 20K purchase that rents for $5000/mth to justify. Shiller is no joke. I get a sense he is actually trying to be overly optimistic. ;)
http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2011/12/23/robert-shiller-on-why-home-prices-could-fall-for-s.aspx
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I didn't say they were going up, I just said that in most markets, average sale price will not go down (In real $$$, not Infaltion adjusted) much more. Keep in mind that 1) prices will not go up any time sion and 2) the upper true will still fall further, but on average, the nominal home prices will not change much from here on out. I expect the declines (measured in average dale price) have more or less stopped.
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Los Angeles, CA
See you at the beginning of 2013 - we'll pick it up then, if you are still around.
This is monotonous and boring.
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San Jose, CA
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ECBB,
Moody's C-S forecast for the SFBA agreed with you. Check out the graph below. I know, I know. I stole it from SFace, and I know he doesn't mind. :)
It's a different feeling when it's your house compared to a rental. Bap probably can attest to this since he bought it recently.
Hope all is well with you and your family. Let us know the good news should you decide to jump into the market this year.
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SubOink - agreed. I'll check back in about a year (presuming I remember) and we'll see if I'm right or not.
E-man - Thanks for the good wishes.
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SubOink says
End of 2012 predictions just for the record.
- I'll still be renting for half the price in the BA
- House prices will have dropped another 10-12% from todays dollar amount. Because of real inflation (you know the one with energy and food included) being 4-6% that will mean a 14-18% drop in inflation terms.
- US will continue to run a high deficit (> 1 trillion) trying to firm up the housing industry only to keep failing badly.
- The jobs market will be turning the corner. We will be back to under 10% unemployment (again the real number) for the first time in 5 years.
- Obama repeats another term, but now looks much older than the beginning of his first term. Time will not be good to him.
- Buffet will stop making housing predictions because he has said "I was dead wrong" too many times already.
- Google will have traveled to the moon just ahead of SpaceX in the contest of "things we can do with our money instead of giving it back to shareholders". Google wins easily. In the race, spaceX was exposed while they were taping their supposed landing in the Arizona desert. The ironic part was it was caught by someone using google earth.
- Facebook will be reduced to a 2 inch x 2 inch portal that is surrounded by animated ads that get activated by just having your mouse pause over them at anytime. Facebook users will be skilled at the art of gliding the mouse over the ad mines without setting them off. A lot of people will give up and just resort to calling their friends again. It will take a while for people to get used to everyones voice again. After the initial IPO explosion of 2012 Facebook will have cratered in valuation. A study will be release late 2012 that will show that out of all the data Facebook collects on its users, only 15% of it is accurate. Facebook was being used by most people to create the people they wanted to be, not the person they were, so all the directed ad value just went out the window. You can't sell Cobe sneakers to a 90 year old man who is posing as a 15 years old jock. Or the 45 years old prisoner posing as a 18 years old sexy teenager with 1500 friends.
- Apple will have gone bad. The lack of Jobs will finally catch up in the release of iPad4. Same as iPad3 but with new colors and a cigarette lighter attachment. Apple valuation gets to 700B before the fall back to 200B. It'll happen quick and painfully at the benefit of Microsoft and Intel.
That's all folks.
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Corning, NY
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There's no law that says there has to be a "bottom" is average RE prices. Prices could stay relatively constant for a long time.
Or worse (better, if you want to buy) prices could slowly erode for a long time. Japan had a huge asset bubble in the late 80's and early 90's. Average prices are still not back to the levels they were then.
RE prices are a reflection of what people can pay. For average REAL (not nominal) prices to rise, Americans' REAL (not nominal) incomes must also rise. I'm not betting on the latter.
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wthrfrk80 says
The only thing I'm confident will rise in this country over the next decade will be taxes and liabilities. Jobs? Income? It doesn't look good.
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RentingForHalfTheCost says
I wish you were wrong. But I don't think you are.
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RentingForHalfTheCost says
Quite a summary there. Where are we gonna get the bucks to raise the home prices? Banks should be really stupid to give away loans at current prices,or we need all the black money from third world flown here. We'd be extremely lucky if prices hold.
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Los Angeles, CA
RentingForHalfTheCost says
So basically, your rent will also be reduced the same amount house prices loose, otherwise if home prices fall...how would you still be renting at half price? :)
Good luck with that rent deduction.
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My prediction:
- The big fall has ended. We are stabilizing around here...maybe a little lower but nothing that would make it worth the wait if you hate your rental and want to move on and start paying into your own pocket.
That was my prediction last year (when we bought) and when I look at actual sales in my neighborhood - I was wrong.
To my surprise prices actually came up slightly (Probably due to the 1 point drop in interest rates).
Now, that the predictions are in - See ya in 2013
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SubOink says
Rents are set by the current economy (jobs, income, demand, etc.). They are really a supply/demand market. Home ownership has not been that for the last 20 years. Owning is highly subsidized by the fed, gov't, Fanny/Freddie, etc. Keeping interest rates artificially low is part of the racket. Having no accountability for the buyers risk of default has got us in a whole heap of trouble. It will take us at least another decade to work through the greed and manipulation.
Part of that working through, will make the cost of homes come back closer to a supply/demand market. This will mean the cost of owning will close in on the cost of renting. We are no where near it yet, hence why I can rent for half. However, as you said, and you will be correct, the cost of ownership will drop. There will be a point where they will be even. Imagine that. That means when I run the numbers I might actually decide to buy along with many other people on this site. Running the numbers now, and listening to the hairbrain reason people are buying just increases my resolve that it makes no sense today.
All the people who rely on real estate for a living will not agree with me. Most home owners will not agree. I expect that and it doesn't change my view. I have been proven right to sell in 2009 and I am continued to be proven right. I have yet to see any positive sign in this downward market. The smartest people don't even talk about housing anymore, they are on to better prospects.
Good luck to all.
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SubOink says
I predict it would be wise for you to sell into the manipulation. Oh wait, when all said and done you would lose money because of the 6% transaction costs, inflation, etc. Hmmm. Yah, you are better off being trapped.