patrick.net

I don't think I've seen real estate "flatline" for an extended period ever.... that's because its a very costly asset with lots of emotions and other factors tied to it.. its normally either appreciating or depreciating in value... so, I don't buy the flatline thing at all...

the question is which will it be.. up or down ? what will jobs and wages be doing in the foreseeable future ? going up or down ?

Here in DC, with potential $2T in cuts coming, I don't see jobs and wages going up ... so, real estate has topped here as well... just like in SFBay area... jobs and wages will be under pressure for the foreseeable future and so will real estate prices..... another 15-20% haircut is coming...

kmo722 says

I don’t think I’ve seen real estate “flatline” for an extended period ever…. that’s because its a very costly asset with lots of emotions and other factors tied to it.. its normally either appreciating or depreciating in value… so, I don’t buy the flatline thing at all…

Are you sure about that? The housing bust in LA/SF in the 90s had a decent flatline. It still had seasonal bumps, but it was largely nominally flat during the later stages. This is not atypical for the housing market -- a housing bust often has a sharp decrease, followed by a longer flat nominal period where inflation helps income catch up with prices.

In this case, we've seen massive government stimulus that helped prop things up a bit, and the efforts are still ongoing. It's anybody's guess what our overlords will do next. We haven't seen normal interest rates yet, and organic sales are still not up to their normal numbers, and distressed sales are still pretty heavy on the market, and I'm not sure how all that will react if there aren't as large subsidies given to housing.

Nomograph says

klarek says

You forgot, AM talk radio.

Wait, let me guess . . . you’re angry at the rest of the world too?
Let other pens dwell on guilt and misery — Jane Austen

No, just helping you out. Your sermons usually have a part about talk radio to pad your sanctimonious bullshit.

In this case, we’ve seen massive government stimulus that helped prop things up a bit, and the efforts are still ongoing. It’s anybody’s guess what our overlords will do next.

This is because half the "stimulus" is propping up prices in Europe to save the Euro.

The end game is China joining the first world and allowing their currency to float so foreign exchange markets can punish them. Until then it is inflation forever.

egads101 says

hey, good advice you gave here, in 2011! Home prices in fremont have tanked hard over the past 2.5 years right?

please, keep making fun of my advice on other threads, you cocksucker!

Actually, it does look like prices in Fremont dropped by a good $70-80K in that time frame. So if his friend HAD waited a year, he probably wouldn't have ended up underwater.

Homeboy says

Actually, it does look like prices in Fremont dropped by a good $70-80K in that time frame. So if his friend HAD waited a year, he probably wouldn't have ended up underwater.

The person I was talking about a few years ago had to put more than 30% down on the home. During the dip in prices, he couldn't refinance and was very stressed out and worried. He took a part time job to add extra money for paying down his mortgage.

He's doing ok now, but all that money he put on the home was his retirement savings. I think this is the strategy a lot of people are doing now: using retirement savings or taking a 401k loan for buying a house. It's a risk, but some people feel it's worth it.

Bubbabear says

This luny is predicting 2015

Actually that loony predicted 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, and now 2015.

Don't like median charts? O.K., Case/Shiller then:

And yes, I know that's not for Fremont, because Case/Shiller doesn't DO a chart for Fremont. However, only the deepest-in-denial permabulls fail to acknowledge that the tax credit created a false surge and that prices dipped afterwards.

waiting_for_the_fall says

He's doing ok now, but all that money he put on the home was his retirement savings. I think this is the strategy a lot of people are doing now: using retirement savings or taking a 401k loan for buying a house. It's a risk, but some people feel it's worth it.

I don't necessarily think that's a bad strategy. I know someone who had to raid his retirement account to come up with a down payment, but he got into the market at a good time. I don't think he could afford the house he's living in if he had to buy it today.

HousingBoom says

The sheeple are so brainwashed it's mind boggling! I think it's hopeless guys. America will never wake up to reality until the ESPN is shut down or until the economy totally collapses!!

My best idea is to get the real price history in people's faces ONGOINGLY.
http://www.showrealhist.com/RHandRD.html

Homeboy says

Don't like median charts? O.K., Case/Shiller then:

And yes, I know that's not for Fremont, because Case/Shiller doesn't DO a chart for Fremont. However, only the deepest-in-denial permabulls fail to acknowledge that the tax credit created a false surge and that prices dipped afterwards.

That graph looks a bit different to other Case-Shiller graphs I've seen for the same period...

egads101 says

no dumbshit, the question is not whether or not he bought the precise mathematical bottom: waiting for the fall "felt sorry for him" cause he made such a huge mistake; turns out waiting for the fall was wrong.

Sorry, but I felt compelled to stand up for him against the permabear pile-on, because the advice WASN'T wrong. In 2010, waiting a year wasn't a bad idea at all. There was plenty of opportunity to buy in 2011 without the tax-credit feeding frenzy. And the advice to get a fixed-rate loan was spot on.

What do you have against buying at the bottom?

And why are you so angry?

Unless he was buying a house in 2010 with the intent to sell it before 2012, the advice not to buy in 2010 was dramatically and horribly wrong. Anyone who heeded that advice made a huge mistake.

Those who made incorrect predictions need to be identified and called out whenever and wherever possible, to prevent them from causing further harm to others. I was almost a victim of these types, but fortunately came to my senses in late 2011.

wave9x says

Unless he was buying a house in 2010 with the intent to sell it before 2012, the advice not to buy in 2010 was dramatically and horribly wrong.

Bullshit. Buying in 2010 and selling within a year would have been the absolute stupidest thing you could do. Are you smoking crack?

You're saying that waiting until 2011 to buy would have been "dramatically and horribly wrong", yet that's exactly what you did?

Wow, you can't make this stuff up.

Figures you can't argue with, though I'm sure some will.

egads101 says

You of course miss several points:

No, I didn't miss anything. You just didn't understand me.

egads101 says

1. while the median price may have been lower, negotiating power on individual deals was better earlier.

You have nothing to back that up other than your own say-so, which is not an objective source. My experience was completely different than yours. I got outbid at least 50 times between 2009-2011, then finally had an offer accepted in early 2012 that I didn't think had a snowball's chance in hell of being accepted. It's a MUCH better house than anything in the same price range I looked at in 2009-2010. In fact, I had tried to buy a smaller house, with a smaller lot, on the same street in 2010 and they got another offer $60,000 OVER asking price.

I'm quite happy with my purchase, and I owe it to the fact that I stayed in the game and kept trying, as discouraging as it was, and I didn't panic and make a hasty decision that I would have ended up unhappy with.

egads101 says

2. risk/reward. As you can see, from how fast the market went up, the far bigger risk was missing the buying opportunity, rather than buying it for 30K too much, because it went down just a little bit more.

Eh, how much of a risk would it have been? He still would have had a year and a half to find something. The REAL problem was the permabears who were still calling a crash in 2012. As soon as you have several months of uninterrupted year-over-year increases, it's a good guess that it's time to get in. And I totally agree with you on that. Anyone who was still trying to wait it out by mid 2012, or is STILL trying to wait it out, completely missed the boat.

The guy I knew in Fremont bought his home for over 600k. Prices dropped and he couldn't refinance. He told me he couldn't refinance and had to make more money quickly to pay down his loan so that he could refinance. With all the government manipulation of interest rates, he probably refinanced this year into a 2.5 15 year fixed using Harp.

How long can the government intervention last?

egads101 says

WTF? what the hell is there to feel sorry for? Had he listened to your advice, and NOT BOUGHT a home, he might be looking to kick you repeatedly in the balls today!!!

It seems as though you are interpreting the advice given as, "NEVER buy a house". I'm not sure where you're getting that. I didn't read it that way at all. Perhaps "waiting" will clarify that for us.

Bobby is clearly off his meds again. The rants are getting more and more funny, and bizarre.

Look at how many times I post and how many times blabber mouth Bobby posts. I don't have time to spend all day on a message board ranting to buy now or be priced out forever.
Some people actually work for a living instead of lounging around all day trolling message boards.

My Fremont friend does not own a 1+ million dollar home.
This is Fremont we're talking about here, not Palo Alto. The home is worth $700k. He made 100k above what he paid and worked long hours at a part time job for several years to pay extra on his mortgage. He sacrificed time with his newborn, time he will never get back. All that work and sacrifice to buy a home. As I said before, some people think it's worth it.

Let's see how Bobby will spin this response into his bizarre fantasy land where he is always right, always the best adviser, best investor, smartest person you will ever meet, and the only person that has anything good to say, ever. We're all just jealous of him, right Bobby?

egads101 says

WTF? what the hell is there to feel sorry for? Had he listened to your advice, and NOT BOUGHT a home, he might be looking to kick you repeatedly in the balls today!!!

That's kind of hard to do since I don't have balls...

Bigsby says

Discounting the fact the Y axis is stretched, the two charts still don't look the same. The composite 10 and 20 are almost identical in your graph. That isn't the case in the other graph.

Ooh! It must be a conspiracy.

Does the chart go up or down between line A and line B?

What is your point?

"Here is a chart showing prices fell from 2010 to 2011"

"Your chart is wrong - here is the correct chart"

"But that chart ALSO shows that prices fell from 2010 to 2011"

"I wasn't arguing about that"

Y'all a bunch of trolls. Just sayin'

Homeboy says

I showed that prices fell in Fremont by 15% from 2010 to 2011, and that's
what you heard? Dude, put down the crack pipe.

Dude---it was just a joke. I think everyone understands what you are saying.

egads101 says

you don't buy a fucking chart. You buy an individual house.

Dumbest comment I've read this week.

egads101 says

THAT is how bad the banks were doing selling in 2009...

I don't give a crap what your index shows, by late 2010, I was bidding $5K over list and waiving my inspection to get my offers accepted.

Hey dumbshit - the chart says prices went UP in 2010 and then went DOWN in 2011. I said 2010 wasn't as good a year to buy. Now you just said you had to waive inspections to get an offer accepted in 2010. Thanks for proving my point! LOL!

Bigsby says

I didn't find a chart that looks slightly different. I posted up the standard graph.

What you have written is meaningless. You have no evidence to back up your contention that yours is "standard" and that mine is "non standard". I posted a chart and you posted another chart. Yours happens to be from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. If you want to be that nitpicky, here is the REAL chart:

It doesn't look like mine OR yours. In fact, yours is MORE wrong, because ONE of the lines is smooth while the other is rippled. What did you call it? "Manipulated"? But yours wasn't even "manipulated" consistently. At least the 2 lines match in contour in my chart.

But who gives a fuck? Your whole diatribe is a red herring, as ALL the charts back up my contention that prices fell from 2010 to 2011. I asked you if you agree, and you refuse to answer. You're just trolling. You picked some irrelevant nitpick to draw attention from the subject, but you aren't even right about your irrelevant nitpick. LOL.

Bigsby says

especially considering the poster you are defending was predicting substantial post 2011 price drops.

I wasn't aware that he made any such prediction. Can you link to a source, please?

egads101 says

the fuck it is... look at the graphs:

Every one of those graphs, save one, shows an upsurge in prices in 2010 that didn't last, (commonly referred to as the 'dead cat bounce') indicating that 2010 was not the best year to buy. The one exception is DC, and nobody here was talking about DC. So again, thanks for proving my point!

egads101 says

It says, to three sigma accuracy, FUCK YOU!

Shouting obscenities at me does not help your case.

egads101 says

Homeboy says

Bigsby says

especially considering the poster you are defending was predicting substantial post 2011 price drops.

I wasn't aware that he made any such prediction. Can you link to a source, please?

oh,homeboy, you mean you are too fucking stupid to read the title post on THIS THREAD?????

That's not the same person, genius. Now why don't you stop embarrassing yourself?

egads101 says

you're correct, you had to read 3 posts down... clearly too much to ask for you to do!!!!!

Um, no - I already read that post. Nowhere in that post does she "predict post 2011 price drops". Egads, I'm seriously starting to think you have some sort of learning disability in addition to your obvious emotional problems.

Feel the Love here.

Homeboy says

No, it's definitely your problem. I simply picked the first chart I found on the web that showed the index and was easy to cut and paste into the thread. To attempt to impugn the source when you agree with my conclusion is disingenuous. You're just trolling. You are arguing for the sake of argument only.

I don't agree with your point. 2010 and 2011 were both good times to buy. The small drop between the times discussed wasn't the major leg down that these people were predicting. They were still telling people that major price drops were coming in their posts of summer 2011. The original poster and those like 'waiting' who chose to support him were clearly wrong.
Homeboy says

How was she wrong? She said she advised a friend not to purchase IN 2010. As far as I am aware, she didn't say NEVER to purchase, she simply said don't do it in 2010. Considering that Egads, who is supposedly on YOUR side in this argument, just admitted he had to bid $5000 over asking and waive contingencies to get an offer accepted in 2010, the advice is looking better and better.

They weren't advising people to buy in the summer of 2011. They were still saying people should continue to wait (for the next supposed substantial leg down in prices they repeatedly claimed was coming in other posts and that obviously never materialized). 2010 in hindsight was a good time to buy. The summer of 2011 may or may not have been a better time than 2010 depending on your particular circumstances. Both offered as good or better deals compared to recent years, which is precisely the opposite of what those people were predicting, the people you have decided to defend on here.

Bigsby says

They were taking the piss out of the claims of the original poster and a few others about what was coming post summer 2011. I'm simply saying that the original poster was wrong, so why bother defending him or his supporters?

I'm not defending the original poster. I even explicitly said so. Your thinking has no nuance to it at all. There is more than "BUY GOOD. NOT BUY BAD."

Homeboy says

Bigsby says

They were taking the piss out of the claims of the original poster and a few others about what was coming post summer 2011. I'm simply saying that the original poster was wrong, so why bother defending him or his supporters?

I'm not defending the original poster. I even explicitly said so. Your thinking has no nuance to it at all. There is more than "BUY GOOD. NOT BUY BAD."

Good grief. You have got to be joking. You said they shouldn't be criticized for saying that 2010 was a poor time to buy. They didn't say to buy in 2011. What is there to support in that person's advice? If they'd said don't buy in 2010, buy in 2011 you might have a point. They didn't and you don't.

Bigsby says

Good grief. You have got to be joking.

Good grief. You have got to be joking.

Bigsby says

You said they shouldn't be criticized for saying that 2010 was a poor time to buy.

Stop lying. I said nothing about any "they". There was ONE person here who advised a friend not to buy in Fremont, CA in 2010, and I proved that prices dropped in Fremont, CA from 2010 to 2011, so 2011 WAS a better year to buy. Stop telling me what I said. Read the fucking thread, will you?

Bigsby says

If they'd said don't buy in 2010, buy in 2011 you might have a point.

No, if she said, "Don't buy in 2010, or EVER", then YOU would have a point. In 2010, we still had two years until prices started going up. TWO YEARS. That's a long time. Are you saying that "Don't buy this year" has exactly the same meaning as "Don't EVER buy"? Because I don't think it does have the same meaning.

Bigsby says

That may have been deliberate or it may have been a simple error.

That's a lie. I made no error and there was nothing misleading. Are you disputing that prices fell from 2010 to 2011?

If yes, then you are wrong.

If no, then you are a troll.

egads101 says

Homeboy, your arguments and hystronics are idiotic.

The word is histrionics, and you are not one to talk about that. I'll show you histrionics:
egads101 says

you cocksucker!

your advice sucked green donkey balls

you are a fucking moron who wouldn't know when to buy a house if Jesus, Buhda, and Einstien all poved it was the best time to buy.

no dumbshit

Nice try, dumb guck, but FAIL!

you mean you are too fucking stupid to read the title post on THIS THREAD????? *

Histrionics, indeed. Ha Ha Ha Ha!

* (BTW, after all that screaming, it turned out you were talking about the WRONG PERSON, LOL.)

Bigsby says

I'm not lying.

Yes you are.Bigsby says

They is a general reference to the people in this thread who said wait (for the predicted major leg down)

I made no general observations. I only said that the relentless lambasting of the woman who advised a friend not to buy, specifically, in Fremont, CA, in 2010, by people in this thread, for which they have shown ZERO evidence that the advice applied to any time period past 2011, was too harsh.

So yeah, you lied.

Bigsby says

And that is NOT what the person who actually posted that example was saying.

You don't know that. Did you ask? You are claiming that the advice applied to a time period well into 2012. Do you have any evidence of that? I would actually agree that it was bad advice if the advice were, "Wait until 2013 to buy". But you don't have any evidence that such advice was given. So don't lie and claim that person said something that you have no way of knowing.

Bigsby says

Were these people saying buy, buy, buy in 2011?

I don't know. Was she saying NOT to buy in 2011?

Bigsby says

It's very easy for you to turn around and say look the graph shows 2011 was a bit cheaper

Well it's also very easy for you to turn around and say look the graph shows 2013 was more expensive. So what?

Bigsby says

However you are attacking those who criticized these people's advice about waiting for the next big decline.

No I'm not. I'm not aware that she specified a particular numerical amount for the decline. Where are you getting the idea that it was in any way quantified? We do know that the person who bought the house ended up underwater, and had to find extra work to make the mortgage payments. I showed that the decline was 15% in Fremont. Were there people claiming that there would be huge price drops after 2012? Yes, I'm sure there were. Was I talking about those people? No, I was not. Just because YOU are confused about who to direct your anger at doesn't make ME wrong.