patrick.net

Roberto,

Got a couple of questions for you. You seemed to be bearish throughout 2010. In hindsight, could you get better deals had you bought in the 3rd & 4th quarters of 2010? When was the bottom for SFH in your market in your opinion? When was the bottom for the condos market? Do you think you caught the tail end of the bottom of the housing market before it bounced? Did you expect the market to bounce like this?

robertoaribas says

You can read it all here on my blog...

http://robertoaribas.wordpress.com/

Why not add your URL to your profile? Then it will show up next to every comment you make.

I saw your blog for the first time due to the weblink on your name. Very useful. I will keep up to date with it. FWIW, I was the guy that contacted you over the summer about a potential deal, still here but in a rental in Tempe since when I got back from Europe there was nothing to buy for the amount of cash I had. Luckily I am very close to work which takes the sting out of being a renter in what is clearly a buyer's market (vs renter's market not vs seller's market). You seem to be sitting pretty right now but I wonder how your gut is feeling. I mean, the speed of the turnaround just feels off to me. The numbers don't lie, my eyes don't lie but man what a fiasco. Honestly, I am new to the valley of as of 2005 and the entire thing has left me really sort of resenting the place: buying into a bubble, losing hard, leaving for a year and saving cash, 4 months before returning having the market turn so quickly and now my cash is useless (not enough for a house, can't qualify for a mortgage). Its like one big kick in the groin ;)

Declining income is fine with declining intrest rates.

If you are a sidelines buyer who havent run the numbers with these low rates you better do it now.

I'm currently trying to by a home for 850k.

Payment after tax write off:1860 a month.

it will rent for 3000+ easily - its a huge custom home.

Why am i insane? Please explain.

RE is not a cash buyer item - thus only rates matter, not cash or income.

As long as you got a super low rate you can have a low wage and afford the payment.

DUH ITS HAPPENING NOW retards.

Look at prices YoY this is a fact.

I think some of you think lending and regulations and foreclosure timelines are unchanged from 20 years ago. Its a whole different country now!

robertoaribas says

I didn't expect this market to U turn so quickly. Like most, I figured I would have years to pick and choose my purchases.

That makes two of us, although I am really only interested in a SFH for my own use. I can't believe how fast things turned, and there is real data showing that things are going up (by whatever magnitude, depends on location) right now. How long will it last? I have NO idea. Considering how fast things turned up, I really wonder if things could go right back down just as easily. If anything, I'd assume that that is the intended game. Boom & bust cycles make certain groups much richer as all of the "retail" folks get cleaned out. It also seems like the benefactors of these boom & bust cycles are the ones at least partially responsible for making these cycles happen. My gut feeling is that it is going to persist like this, probably getting worse until...it can't. At that point, I think that people will have more immediate problems than their investments' performance and it will be sort of ugly. Some of my colleagues that fled Eastern Block nations decades ago are watching all of this wearily since things that they saw in their home country are starting to look all too familiar here.

"Predictions? I predict prices will continue to climb in Phoenix. The factors pushing the market up are simply stronger than the few small current headwinds. The rest of the minuses are purely speculative at this time"

Why do you see only the minuses as speculative? The statistics in your pluses are speculative as well since they're prone to change.

PockyClipsNow says

RE is not a cash buyer item - thus only rates matter, not cash or income.
As long as you got a super low rate you can have a low wage and afford the payment.

What matters is lax lending standards. That's the missing element that's needed for a sustainable bubble. If Romney wins and there's a Republican Congress the mortgage fraud orgy most likely will resume.

But they need to call off the goons. And they will. Ever check out http://mortgagefraudblog.com/