patrick.net

ConfusedRenter,

Any serious investor will tell you that the expected return on a illiquid investment should be at least be 3% points about a liquid investment to compensate for the risk. Even with if real estate matches stocks over the long haul (which is not possible due to residential real estate having no economic productive capacity after it is built), it's still not a good investment.

The Fed doesn't control mortgage rates, only the federal funds rate. Even without the default risk that has not be properly priced into MBS, 6% is too little return on a 30 year callable fixed investment. Mortgage rates are headed up in the long run regardless of the fed's action. The S&P 500 is up over 10% for the year. The strong stock market performance will shift investment from fixed income to equities.

@SP,

Keep the ConfusedRenter spoofs comin'. I enjoy the occasional chuckle.

Funny you think i’m a realtor. Can you remind me again what your background/occupation/story is?

CR, Why don't you search some of the previous threads and find out. I'm sure it's there. I'd point you to the right thread, but then again, "this blog is so enthusiastic, that by the time i turn around, i can’t find what i posted anymore."

SQT,

Actually the ML article said that Merrill has backed down from their original position of rate reductions starting as early as Jan. 07 to Mar. 07! Had Cornfused Realtor read further he might have noted that Credit Suisse is of the opinion that we'll be at 5.25 for quite some time. Not to knock Merrill but Credit Suisse has an equal right to their forecast.

I'll agree, even if we lowered the overnight lending rate back to 1% it would only add volatility, not salvation.

Allah,

Aren't 1,2,3 usually the same person?

Allah,

LOL! Would it have killed you to just come out and say it? I know, I know we don't want to come off as being prejudicial to FB's!

SP

Thanks for the enjoyable satire on a pretty rough evening. I saw the Marin surge in foreclosures too, and I'm happy to see it (and not ashamed either). Although I don't think we'll see this translate into price action for some months yet to come, but it is a promising *leading indicator*. A banker guy a was talking to over the weekend (who may or may not have known what he was talking about, but he was good enough to fool me) said that it usually takes 4-6 months for foreclosed properties to re-enter the primary housing market. It came up when I was asking about how badly banks do or don't want to assume homes, in the context of my questions about short sales, credit fraud, etc.

His quite insistent take was that banks almost never want homes, unless it's a credibility thing. I told him my complex "game theory" argument about banks needing to signal intent to other banks vis-a-vis borrowers. He laughed at me and said I was being far too generous in my assessment of most banks strategic planning. Oh well, so much for theory, lol. (Actually his first response was something about me smoking crack).

Anyway, he said the banks will usually dicker around for a couple of months trying to avoid foreclosure, putting the homeowner on this and that structured plan. Then they try short sales and some other stuff I didn't quite understand the difference from short sales. Finally, they'll foreclose. From that point forward it's a couple months to actually foreclose. He said no sooner than 60 days in CA, usually 90 in Marin. Then the bank takes another 30-60 days to sell the property to a foreclosure investor -- the guys who buy foreclosures at auctions. Sometimes they don't auction the home, but sell direct to some foreclosure investor they've worked with before, depending on the situation. Expensive homes get auctioned. Finally those guys will resell the home again to the regular homebuying public, after fixing up any damage and marketing it; or they'll transfer it to an agency they work with that buys inventory. A bunch of tax stuff is apparently involved too.

So if this guy's for real, then it'll be up to half a year before any of those foreclosures start to move prices. Ugh.

(Oh, and the rate isn't 80some% foreclosures, but an increase in the *rate* of 80some%. An increase from 2% to 3.6% is an 80% increase in the rate).

Allah

….and it is because of this that RE will not be sticky this time.

You are too much, my friend. You're continually confusing sticky with something else. You studied engineering, if I recall. So you understand continuous functions versus threshold discontinuities. Sticky just means the latter. It is ironically *necessary* for fast price movements (when the value passes through a discontinuity).

If it makes you feel better, we won't say "sticky", we'll just call it Allah Price Movements (APMs).

So you understand continuous functions versus threshold discontinuities. Sticky just means the latter. It is ironically *necessary* for fast price movements (when the value passes through a discontinuity).

A more general engineering analogy is that RE prices exhibit hysteresis on the way up vs. down.

Person,

Putting your scheme into an option pricing formula will tell you exactly why your scheme won't work. The "odds" are too far to the extreme. It's not like writing a call on oil at a $90 strike with, say $70 underlying today. It's more like writing that $90 strike with $0.000001 underlying today. Remember, the tickets themselves sell for $1 in the open market, with 0% volatility. Given the odds of a winner (even counting all the minor winners), your options would be essentially worthless.

Allah,

and what I believe everyone else means by it other than you

Excuse my mistake. And here I thought many others agreed with me, not the least of which *the people who coined the term "sticky" in the first place*. I will agree that there is a widely held misunderstanding.

Sticky is independent of intent. Some is buyer psychology. Some seller psychology. Some simple transactional friction and lack of liquidity.

Skibum,

Thanks for untangling my statement :) I did say it's a rough evening. Telecoms. Ugh.

ConfusedRenter Says:
I’ve found real estate to be sticky on the way down, and less sticky on the way up.

[surfer-x emulator ON]

Come to think of it, troll, your mom is the same way. But can you please get her to eat less corn? Thanks much.

[surfer-x emulator OFF]

SP

i'm sure this will be all over the place soon enough:

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2006/10/26/HOMESALES.TMP

not quite a bloodbath...yet.

from the news today: http://tinyurl.com/ymocbq
"The worst is behind us as far as a market correction — this is likely the trough for sales," said David Lereah, the Realtors' chief economist.

Liarreah, you ignorant slut - the worst is still behind you, so you and your realtwhore buddies better grease up.

SP

Person,

Soooooooo you want to be a gas station attendant? They already sell lotto in 1 dollar increments in gas stations. I agree if you limit yourself to that role, you probably won't be hearing from the CA gaming commission or the SEC.

Or it might just be my limited perception...

Allah,

Great article. Socketsite is actually pretty cool. The only thing I didn't care for was the inference that the pain will be concentrated on those that are "new" to home ownership! Oh to be sure that crowd is toasty but guess what? Even if you're in your 40's or 50's and have NEVER been a renter but have managed to completely tap out your equity welcome to hard times!

The fact that Barings Bank was established in 1762 didn't stop Nick Leeson from bringing it down.

I'm not sure why there haven't been more posts this morning I can only assume that everyone else is struggling to get their mind wrapped around the largest median price drop since 1970?

Trust me, I'M struggling! Kind of like those cheesy Time/Life books "The Year in Review" deals? To help me put this in perspective 1970 was the year I discovered that not all girls were "icky".

Allah,

Now damn it, I hadn't thought of that!

One of the most indescribable "sinking feelings" is watching a stock position that you were SO confident about just prior, begin to wane. It's then that you learn that there are others that share your approximate cost basis and haven't been the least bit reluctant to take profits.

Now you're not so sure. As your profitability slides towards that of a bank return each time you re-calculate you've found that you are now painted into a corner. Sell NOW or hold long term.

It's not that you're in a "bad" position but you decide to sell and be less "analytical" next time. Done and done.

O.K. In 1968 ALL girls were "icky". What do you want me to say?

re sticky, housing also suffers from a 'ratchet effect', i.e. sticky in one direction only. one reason for the ratchet effect is the high transaction cost of property transfer, which can be added to the nominal book value. e.g. if someone bought a place for $300K and had to pay $10K in stamp duty and $2K in lawyers fees (and possibly buyers agents fees and other closign fees), they tend to want to recover at least $312K when they sell, especially in the case of flippers or other short term holding patterns. doesn't everyone agree on the basic conception of sticky here tho, i would've thought it was an intuitive jargon word implying price viscosity...

I expect September’s record for the biggest recorded nationwide median YOY fall to last precisely one month.

@ajh,
Oh, but you're forgetting the NAR's best weapon in the numbers-manipulation game: using "revised" numbers, as in, The YoY decline compared to October 2005's REVISED median is... let's see what those liars come up with next.

George,

Well they haven't made it down to the studio yet but Tom Stevens and Lawrence Yun are already putting a positive spin calling it the peak for inventory build up! Rally?

I still can't get my mind wrapped around this thing. This is huge, anyway you slice it. Oh, btw Allah, I was born in 1959 but it just makes this whole situation that much more unreal for me. Let's call a spade a spade, this is a free fall!

A couple of real, referenced, definitions of the apparently controversial word "sticky", as it applies to economics:

The Economist

From Mankiw et. al.

The best irony of all this that gives me a smile is that, in the *real world*, _all prices are sticky_, in every market, period. That's because there are no theoretically perfect markets. Arguing that prices won't be sticky this time is the same thing as saying the real world is irrelevant, and pure theory tells how it will go down. That at least one person here doesn't appreciate that irony is the best entertainment of all.

Randy H,

Judging by today's numbers this market is looking about as sticky as........ somebody help me out here!

DinOR

Sticky just means that prices aren't readjusted all the time, in real-time. Seeing big drops in house prices actually proves price stickiness, not disproves it. That's the irony; a basic misunderstanding of the concept. Non-sticky prices would mean there wouldn't be any big, instant drops.

Judging by today’s numbers this market is looking about as sticky as…….. somebody help me out here!

@DinOR,

Sorry man, the only analogies I can come up with are uncouth and involve KY jelly.

Randy H,

O.K, I can go along with that. By that definition the final "closing price" would be determined by the LAST document signed at the title office. So we started the process 2 weeks ago at 750K with a known quantifiable "rate of descent" and would have closed at 739K but the escrow agent got held up in traffic so it's now $738,750.

Thank God for the seller she didn't call in sick that day!

@allah,
I think what Randy's trying to argue is this. Using a mechanical analogy (KY jelly aside), think of the market as a mechanical piston. If friction (stickiness) is low (lubricated), it slides smoothly back and forth without difficulty. If friction (stickiness) is high, you'll have to force it to move along it's shaft, and it gets stuck at points along the way. But once you get it going, there are relatively small movements that are herky-jerky as the piston slides along its path and gets stuck in various positions.

God, that's a nasty analogy if you think about it! Lubrication, shaft, stickiness, it's all there!

skibum,DinOR

Exactly on point. One of the factors of the real definition of stickiness is "Nominal Contract Performance". That's the gum in the piston shaft. It's not like the escrow agent has a "house price ticker" on her Blackberry, as she rushes through traffic trying to close the deal on the "housing spot market". Instead, there is a signed contract for price which then locks that price through the entire process, be it hours, days or even months. That closing price will always be *backwards looking*; either too high or too low, given what new contracts _starting today_ go for.

@SF Woman,

I've definitely mentioned it before, but I really do see Boston as a leading indicator in the RE collapse of the "glamor", er, bubble cities. My "sources" back in Boston tell me the RE market is still dead in the water. There's another surge of hope for a Spring 07 bounce, but that's only going to lead to disappointment, I think.

skibum,

LOL! Yeah until Randy H straightened me out I was thinking "buzzard puke on a door knob" or "owl sh@t on a mirror"?

I think I'm starting to conceptualize where Randy is coming from and it (in my mind anyway) centers around a "known and quantifiable rate of descent". Since we aren't in an economic backdrop that permits us to say, "Median price decreased 9.7% YOY so divided by 365 that translates to a .0265% a day decline in sellers home value".

I think that IS what happened but we could only determine that THIS morning and in retrospect at that!

RE prices ARE sticky! However; given what we now know this is the first data we've seen that should cement in seller's minds just what the consequences are for "taking it off the market and re-listing in the spring"?

"Nominal Contract Performance"

Wow! How many times have we heard someone lament being the first tenant in a new office bldg. or strip mall?

"Yeah, they stuck it to me. I was promised all this foot traffic and for a year I was the ONLY guy at this location! NO coincidental business at all! I'm lucky I survived. Now these "new" guys are feeding off of ME and their leases are MUCH lower. Yeah, they stuck it to me".

Ok, you win Allah. You believe Adam, a San Francisco based business consultant, is the Editor in Chief of the highly intelligent and very enthralling San Francisco real estate blog SocketSite and a member of the Real Estate Blog Squad.

And I'll believe N. Gregory Mankiw

What is a "blog squad"? lol

@Randy,
I just hope Mankiw isn't associated with his other Crimson colleague, Nicholas Restinas, that REIC lackey.

words like sticky have a broader meaning than when they refer specifically to RE.

Thanks for clearing that up. So in RE the notions of economics don't hold. I'll accept that. Then we shouldn't be invoking any economics at all when trying to understand the RE market. Let's use darts. I'll agree darts are probably more accurate (unless you're talking about my dart game).

skibum,

Mankiw isn't a RE lackey. Many criticize him for being a Reagan-style Republican lackey, being he is the anointed saint of neoclassical economics, and thus the author of many texts invoked by supply-siders.

I could have referenced many others from less notorious universities, like Pindyck. If I recall he discusses price stickiness in purely micro-economic terms, using empirical data from various markets to prove the theory. I think it was he who tackled markets people thought as "not sticky", like currency FX, and then showed they are in fact very sticky due to "non-maximizing behavior", which Mankiw would call irrational, but behavioral economists/finance would call "the real world".

Allah,

You know, not everything of value is Google-able; in fact the most valuable stuff you actually have to read in a book or pay for a digital license.

I already referenced everything. But for extreme emphasis:

N. Gregory Mankiw, _macroeconomics_, fifth ed. (c)2003.; Worth Publishers. ISBN: 0-7167-5237-9. p515, table 19-2.

Elaborations on specific markets:

"On Sticky Prices", N. G. Mankiw, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994), pp117-154..

@allah and Randy,
To end this pissing contest about Mankiw's stickiness credentials, here's a link from Randy's own link to Mankiw's page at "that school in Cambridge":

http://www.economics.harvard.edu/faculty/mankiw/papers.html

All his papers listed are pdf downloadable. Upon my untrained cursory read, there are a few opining about price stickiness vs. information stickiness. The latter does seem like an interesting concept - that economic decisions are made based on old information (lagging indicators, slow dissemination of data across the economy, etc). Cool stuff.

DinOr says

"To help me put this in perspective 1970 was the year I discovered that not all girls were “icky”. "

Or are they just "icky" on the way down?