patrick.net

I've been a long time visitor to Patrick.net.  I first stumbled across this site back in 2002, and have kept coming back periodically ever since. As one of the original moderators of the previous incarnation of the forum, I am still adjusting to the new format. I think that houses are (at least on the coasts) still fundamentally overpriced. My main  metric is that when the median household income can afford the median priced home, sanity will have returned to the market. In my target area, this still has not happened yet.

As the username suggests, I have lived and /or worked in various areas along the East Coast,  and have family and/or friends all along the I-95 corridor. Whenever I travel, I try to grab a local paper and look at what the job market and housing markets are doing.

I love crunching numbers, analyzing data and trying to come up with "what happens next". One of the draws to this site, now that there is no debate that a housing bubble both existed and popped, is that there exists a cornucopia of opinions as to how this all shakes out. I try to seek out as many points of view as possible as a way to challenge myself and my view of the world. As much as I like to contribute, I also seek to learn from others. "Being smart is learning from your own mistakes, wisdom comes from learning form others." My main concern going forward is neither inflation nor deflation, rather it is devaluation of the currency by governmental decree; rendering years of savings moot. I think the odds of this happening are low (as of the time of this post) but may become greater as this whole mess unwinds.

As a firm believer in macro-economic cycles, I think that we are at an inflection point. I think that for better or for worse, the idealized America we all know and love is at risk of fading into the past. Perhaps it never existed as we envision it, but the stark reality is that the generations that succeed the baby-boomers will be the first in a long while that do not end "better" than their predecessors, at least not by any objective measure.

Furthermore, as this housing mess plays out, maybe we American's will realize that less access to credit, although painful to adjust to, may be a good thing in the long run. Our savings will ultimately make us stronger and more secure, both as individuals and as a nation.

#housing