WatchPlease try to ignore all threads with hyperbolous sounding titles like:
"Chinese are buying up all the real estate in the Bay Area"
and
"Palo Alto prices up, eventually spreading to rest of Bay Area".
These are just realtor trolls, trying to use scare tactics to shore up some more business. When will they realize that their immature coercion has long been passé, and is no longer effective around here.
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Half Moon Bay, CA
what about the "realtors are all liars and sumbags" troll?
Is that really a realtor doing reverse psychology?
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You are clearly out of your mind. Have you read there other threads ?
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I am not a Realtor® troll. But of course immigrants are buying up the houses in The Fortress.
You don't believe it? Go to the local K-12's and look at the faces of the kids.
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B.A.C.A.H. says
Actually,if you think hard,they are buying entire America.
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47 male
Lafayette, CA
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There's no fundamental difference between a random nobody posting bull market rumors and a random nobody posting bear market rumors.
I don't recall seeing any support for most of the assertions here, including sales being at 14 year lows, (wrong) inventory is rising, (wrong) and we're in year 6 of crashing prices. (wrong) They are all just blind assertions being spammed from someone who changes his screen name like socks.
So how about the bear market trolls?
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47 male
Lafayette, CA
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Never Trust Realtors says
There's absolutely nothing to refute as I've told you a dozen times.
All you're doing is spewing pointless blind assertions. You haven't actually given a single number, data point, graph, news article, or anything else EVER to support anything you say here.
You want me to refute your massive steaming pile of nothing?
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Danville, CA
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waiting_for_the_fall says
As I keep saying, I grew up around real estate salesmen and insurance salesmen and people who appraise property. Some of them are honest and some of them I wouldn't admit to my home.
The slick ass nature of residential real estate here in California says more about the culture and the economy than anything else. Again and again, I don't think this state ever recovered from the base closings and downsizing in the aerospace industry. Now that housing has busted, there doesn't seem to be anything left. We can't all work for the government or schools or fund a non profit. Some of us can work in tech. Some of us can work in the service industry. Some of us can work in banking, I suppose.
Basically, the whole state's economy needs to be rebuilt and that'll take years.
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San Jose, CA
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iwog says
Exhibits #1, #2 & #3:
http://www.reuters.com/article/2007/07/17/property-southerncalifornia-idUSN1723406920070717
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Corning, NY
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Never Trust Realtors says
Speaking of constantly-changing user ID's...
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Los Angeles, CA
Dunross, my prediction is your charts and links will be completely ignored, or explained away and dismissed as though you posted complete fluff.
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Corning, NY
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Overpriced RE will continue to lose value in real terms, even as prices remain constant in nominal terms.
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I believe this is the Home Sales Volume for CA?
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Hahahahahahhahahahahahahaha! Hahahahahahahahahaha! We're so fucked. In a few years, people will be tearing down McMansions to eat the adhesives in the particle board. Hahahahahahahahahaha! It's never been a better time to learn how to kill and cook your neighbor! Cannibal anarchy is your friend!
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Danville, CA
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Ya know, it's funny. I post in forums all over the country and the only time I see stuff like this is here.
People back home do not act like this. They all seem to think we're in a weak recovery coming out of a deep recession that will require another recession (stimulated by interest rate hikes) like what we saw in the late seventies and early eighties. Harvey Golub said the same thing yesterday, almost word for word.
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Corning, NY
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There's a reason they made a movie called "Escape From LA" and not "Escape From Columbus."
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Pleasanton, CA
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dodgerfanjohn says
If I wore a realtors hat.
The graphs posted are confusing and not conclusive. The scale is all wrong and deceptive. If you change the change the Y-axis to increments of 100K then the lines actually look flat. If you squint hard enough and tilt you head then it appears to be rising! We all know that house prices ONLY rise, so there you have it folks. They are just following the historic norm (by historic I means only the time window where it was actually rising).
The Distressed loans bar graphs are just silly. Who cares about distressed homes. They have very little, if any, effect on real house values. For every distressed house in California there is another Facebook millionaire ready to buy it. That doesn't even take into account all the Asians in Cupertino that have recently paid off their mortgage and looking for that 2nd home. The sky is the limit and distressed home volume is a joke when you look at real demand.
Realtor hat off (Jesus that hurt my head)
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47 male
Lafayette, CA
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Never Trust Realtors says
Yeah, we gotta talk about that reading disorder. Until you actually post a data point, there's nothing to refute.
dodgerfanjohn says
Wow that's brilliant. The troll makes a ridiculous claim like "inventory is massive and climbing. Dunross posts a graph about the foreclosure pipeline that doesn't support the troll at all. Then dodger says "I bet you're gonna dismiss it!!!!!!"
I'll demonstrate it with an example:
NTR: "The stock market went down 500 points today!!!"
DNR: "Hey look at this chart from 1987."
DF: "My prediction is that someone is gonna say that chart from 1987 is going to be dismissed as complete fluff."
Some days you just have to laugh.
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Danville, CA
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wthrfrk80 says
Nevertheless, we needed a place to live that was safe and quiet and suited our needs. Because of the unique situation in which we bought, it'll end up being the same as rent without the nasty tax bill every Spring. My boss has a Bachelors in Computer Science, does taxes as a side business and said it helped his kids immensely when they both bought last year. My CPA said it was a good idea because of what we did and the way we did it.
We're good to go.
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San Jose, CA
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Here is another graph from the Dr., showing that the foreclosure inventory pipeline has grown almost 50% since 2009:
So, which particular claim from our "Realtor Distrusting" friend, haven't I proved with my data?
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Pleasanton, CA
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Just imagine if all those FC dwellers had to pay something for shelter every month. I wonder, just wonder, how much that would hurt our strong economy. Not paying their mortgage and having no accountability is great for their disposable income.
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Mountain View, CA
bmwman91's website
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iwog says
Yup. Anecdotal evidence is anecdotal evidence. I see a lot of it in here, from both parties. I find myself generally agreeing with the bearish stuff because I happen to wish that prices will keep falling. However, I'm not about to let myself get fooled into seeing what I want to see.
I think that there is plenty of real data out there suggesting that the system is fundamentally broken and that we are still riding an unsustainable wave. However, nobody can predict what measures the government and large private entities will enact to keep things tipped in a direction that they want. Maybe prices should jump down 20%, with all sorts of hard data showing it, but that doesn't mean that it'll happen. If the economy was deterministic, it would cease to function since everyone would know what was coming, and everyone would make the same move. Our economy functions on the fact that there are winners and losers.
So, if it was deterministic, but that caused it to not give everyone the results that they knew were coming, wouldn't that make it non-deterministic? There's a paradox for you.
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Oakland, CA
So the guy from Calculated Risk who called bottom last month is he one of these "realtors in disguise"?
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Danville, CA
gregpfielding's website
toothfairy says
No, Bill McBride isn't a realtor. I listened to him interviewed on a radio show recently and he believes that the "bottom" is likely in, with prices reaching their lows in Nov-Jan. He expects Case-Shiller and the other indexes will start showing gains later on this Spring and Summer (there is a reporting lag).
He also believed that national home prices are very likely at bottom, but that the more bubbly areas will probably still see more declines. And by saying prices are at bottom, he is NOT saying that he expects them to start going back up.
One of his main arguments is that inventory is very very low - and that he doesn't see the supply of homes for sale growing all that much going forward. Pricing is Supply and Demand. So, if the supply stays limited, we probably will see flat or even higher prices.
It is a fact that inventory is very low. And I am already seeing price-strength this Spring, just because there is nothing for sale. Demand is weak, but Supply is even weaker. Until there is a policy shift, or a change in social mood where lots of people start listing their homes as short sales, we will continue to have limited inventory.
Point is, even though he is discounting the enormous "shadow inventory" that's out there, it wouldn't be wise to bet against Bill McBride.
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Corning, NY
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It's hard to know what will happen since the market is so distorted by things like "extend and pretend" and ultra-low interest rates.
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47 male
Lafayette, CA
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dunnross says
It says nothing of the sort. Homes are eligible for foreclosure after 3 months, not 24 months. A home 24 months delinquent is no closer to an actual sale than a home that's 3 months delinquent. Assuming that graph is correct, it says three things:
1. The total numbers have been falling for 12-months.
2. The numbers of brand new defaulters has been falling for three years.
3. If a bank hasn't foreclosed after 24-months, it's very possible they can't. What happens if the shadow inventory is actually a large number of defective liens that cannot be enforced? Instead of a few hundred liens being abandoned like today, a few hundred thousand are abandoned? Wouldn't that mean the shadow inventory isn't actually inventory and never will be? (yes I think it does)
Disagree with me if you want, but this chart still doesn't support the troll.
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Corning, NY
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iwog says
Very good point. Although it's hard for me to imagine that banks will allow people to live "rent free" in their houses forever.
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Pleasanton, CA
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iwog says
Hehe. Didn't someone call this earlier. Nice call. ;)
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47 male
Lafayette, CA
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wthrfrk80 says
That's kind of what I was thinking. It's almost impossible to imagine that a bank would intentionally abandoned 24+ months worth of rental value unless the value of the property was too low to justify an REO status, or the paperwork proving the lien simply doesn't exist anymore.
It sounds incredible, but in the wake of the illegal robo-signing scandal it's possible that large numbers of documents tracing ownership were simply destroyed.
While the original sale is usually recorded at the county in a short amount of time, subsequent transfers often take months before they are recorded. (and that's assuming someone bothered to do the paperwork right)
This theoretical shadow inventory may not exist at all. It's one thing having the bank computers tell you that someone owes a mortgage payment. It's entirely another thing justifying to a court that you have the legal right to foreclose.
What other reason could there be for 3-month, 6-month, 9-month, 12-month, 18-month, and 23-month delinquencies all shrinking while the forever-month stockpile continues to rise?
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47 male
Lafayette, CA
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Never Trust Realtors says
Totally wrong. A security interest has two parts that must be satisfied in full before a foreclosure can take place:
1. a perfected lien consisting of either a deed of trust or a mortgage.
2. an unbroken line of transfers proving the current mortgage holder has the right to foreclose.
There are homes in the news every single day that are returned FREE AND CLEAR to the owner of record because of paperwork screw ups. This is nothing new and a quick Google search turns up hundreds if not thousands of cases:
http://jacksonville.com/business/2011-04-10/story/bank-gives-man-foreclosed-jacksonville-house-free
http://realestate.aol.com/blog/2011/04/12/couple-heads-off-foreclosure-by-fighting-back/
http://realestate.aol.com/blog/2011/04/14/foreclosure-foul-up-wins-man-a-free-home/
http://www.mortgageloan.com/banks-abandoning-foreclosures-3150
What I'm suggesting is that the HUGE backlog of 24+ month delinquent homes might indicate a massive and unreported problem within the mortgage industry. If this is true, and these cases represent the majority of 24+ month delinquencies, the shadow inventory is a fiction. It does not exist.
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Corning, NY
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iwog says
A very good question. Like you say, I can't imagine giving up 3,6,9,12,18,or 24 months of rental income from a place if I legally own it...unless I can't prove that I legally own it.
Maybe the "packaging" of mortages into "mortgage backed securties" caused a huge mess in determining who actually owns what. Maybe that foreclosed house down the street is owned by 100 different investors.
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47 male
Lafayette, CA
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I linked a couple of more examples above. This seems to be a growing trend.
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47 male
Lafayette, CA
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The funny thing is when I said "wrong", I then posted a bunch of examples proving you were wrong.
When you said "wrong", you posted nothing then claimed you were right anyway.
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Corning, NY
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NTR is almost ready for my Ignore list, along with AngryCloud, AngryDan, and StonedArtimusMaxtor.
Of course, NTR has changed his/her name roughly every 24 hours for the past week, so maybe the Ignore option won't work unless Patrick stops allowing users to constantly change names.
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Never Trust Realtors says:
"WRONG again.
The security interest exists into perpetuity until it is satisfied."
NTR, under your theory, how is the security interest established as being perfected?
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Pleasanton, CA
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wthrfrk80 says
I can imagine. Each of the major banks have a huge inventory of properties. The more they foreclose on the larger that inventory grows. There are two forces at work with the banks. On one hand they want to unload this shadow inventory, but on the other they have to watch the rate of unloading because there are not that many sales out there and if they release too many they will be in effect devaluing their inventory. That is the push/pull situation they find themselves. The larger that inventory gets the worse the problem gets for them.
By not foreclosing on people they at least get someone still living in the house and doing the upkeep in most situations. People even pay the property tax while not paying the mortgage. Better to have only the bank breathing down their backs. So, if the banks know the tap is only on drip they would rather slow down the backlog. Rent is the least of their worries. If you do mark-to-market on the inventory most banks are pretty much worthless and they know that. Now it is a shell game.
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The thing with many recent immigrants/new citizens is that they are still willing to buy a house at extreme prices and not spend money on anything else. Just work and pour the money into the mortgage.
Not many other folks are still willing to do that. We will have to wait and see how this goes.
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dunnross says
Here here...
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lostand confused says
Could you say the same for immigrants from decades past. Perhaps it not immigrants but rather migrants from the east coast.. Connecticut, New Jersey, New York. I certainly have seen and spoken to lots of new people here from the east coast.
And many wrongly believe CA prices have always been higher.
For realtors... "the end justify the means".
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Pleasanton, CA
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wthrfrk80 says
I actually think it has never been an easier time "to know" where we are headed. Huge shadow inventory, very low real buyers, stagnant income levels, massive unemployment, historically huge deficits and debt, currency debasement, etc. etc. There is not one positive thing in this country that would contribute to a bull market in housing. At best we skip along avoiding another crash while our currency and savings go to hell. It is really just a transfer of wealth that is happening between two groups. The reasonable savers and greedy over-leveraged risk takers. Fairness gets kicked in the face in today's economy.