patrick.net

Details... details! Please tempt us!

What's the hurry? Prices are going down for next 2-20 years.

It is not the time to buy as long as you can still see "It's A Terrible Time To Buy An Expensive House -- Why?" at the top of the patrick net. I guess he will change the title when he think it's ok to buy. :-)

does RealtyTrac cover the East Coast?

Realty Trac is what I used to scan default props. The onlt frustrating part is it allows you to see the crap REwhores get away with.

Is not buying much the same as RENTING MONEY? ('Thank you Patrick for that insight') It does seem to me, that point is worth considering. When you buy you are moving the risk to one of PRICE of the home. As the money is being borrowed (IE: rented) and when you RENT you shift the risk to one of rent risk. I know, I know all the other intangible and yet valuable to some, benefits of ownership. But when you stand back and look at the market, without bias and or hope (in either direction) it seems to become clear that the market has years of settling back (this is Ca. and more to the point the east bay I am referring to, as it is the only market I am in my opinion very familiar with. I can see the areas of Brentwood, Antioch, Discovery Bay, Byron, Stockton, and all of those areas, falling another 40% easily and that is with Oil at under 200 dollars a barrel, as soon as oil goes over 200 dollars a barrel we will take a faster paced fall. That may happen faster then anyone will want to believe it is just over the horizon, with China and India growing their demand, our entire way of life and the way we were brought up to live was based primarily due to CHEAP oil... (Energy) those days are numbered, and in fact behind us, look at the price of gallon of fuel everywhere else in the world (free world) I know this is a tired argument, but I see most if not all of it is spot on...(no pun about spot market, lol)

cloud13 says

they are trying to sell me that crap for more than 700K in less than 12 years.

Is it 12 yrs or 12 months?

LCD TV or worn out jeans doesn't make meaningful clue about the home and the owners. I got bunch of them too, and oh, wait a sec, I am a renter. lol. But I really don't mind things like that when I went to openhouse. Sometimes, I knew few things right away when I enter the house. They didn't bother clearing personal stuffs at all. Lazy asses they are, maybe stupid realtor or somthing. But again, I'd take the home if it is what I wanted and reasonably priced. You should do too.

Now, this "reasonably priced" part is tricky, isn't it? 700K should get you descent home at descent area. When it won't, it's either you looking at wrong area or wrong home, or them still got wrong sense of home value. If most of them in a certain area are like that, it's not the area for you. You may want to wait little longer, or start try another location.

Has anyone been monitoring the inventory? I noticed an astounding number of open houses last week around my place in Cupertino. The inventory, at least locally, seems to have just popped all of a sudden. I'm guessing this is somewhat seasonal in spring?

globe33, I'm pretty sure that's seasonal. It was 70 and sunny this past weekend - might as well have been spring.

Realty Trac numbers aren't real representation. It's a marketing tool similar to home shopping network. Just because some guy asks for a million for his beat up old Chevy doesn't mean it's worth it.

For example most of the houses there you can find on county assessors records sold for roughly about half of what they are advertised. Realtors are trying to do that keystone thing on real estate, just world doesn't work that way.

To add. I've seen a piece of property listed for sale for 3 million, while it sold for only $38,000 in 2008. So don't pay too much attention to the asking price.

@ChrisLA

>Just because some guy asks for a million for his beat up old Chevy doesn’t mean it’s worth it.

LoL!

I was a subsciber to RealtyTrac and some of the data is out of date. However, it is a good tool for watching what is coming on the market.

Well, I think prices can go down more but I think you really have to look at your motivations for buying. As Patrick says, you shouldn't look at real estate as an investment more of a place to live. If you plan to live in your house for the long haul then it can make sense to buy.

For example, I've been waiting the past 6 years for prices to fall and they have certainly fallen a bit. I know they probably will fall a bit more but it's impossible to catch the exact bottoms on investments (be it real estate, stocks, etc). I'm getting ready to buy a house in the San Diego area at the end of this year. The houses we are looking at are all over $1 million. Many of them are down 30% from peak. It still makes sense for us as we plan to stay in the house until the kids are older and out of high school. We have 2 kids and they are 3 and 1 and we don't want to move around and will be there for the long haul. The types of houses we want to buy are all over $6,000 per month to rent.

It is better for us to buy as we won't move around. Property taxes are high and Mello Roos taxes come into the picture in San Diego but we don't want to have to worry about moving every few years with the kids.

ForeclosureRadar also is excellent. Possibly better IMO.

It seems like 90% of trustee sales are postponed. So That might indicate there SHOULD BE 10 times the number of foreclosures than there are.... BUT there is the loan mod bs and of course postponing 4eva is part of the fed gov response....

Basically the MAJORITY of people in underwater homes are going to default at some point. Underwater is #1 predictor of foreclosure.

American in Japan says

@ChrisLA
>Just because some guy asks for a million for his beat up old Chevy doesn’t mean it’s worth it.
LoL!

But eBay employees can drive it to work !