0
0

Good News! Lower House Prices!


 invite response                
2008 Apr 16, 7:13am   18,522 views  166 comments

by Patrick   ➕follow (61)   💰tip   ignore  

happy

How can we get the press to stop reporting lower prices as bad news?

Lower food prices = good.
Lower gas prices = good.
Lower house prices = GOOD.

Why don't we see the good news story of lower prices in the press?

Patrick

« First        Comments 27 - 66 of 166       Last »     Search these comments

27   DennisN   2008 Apr 17, 1:18am  

Rats. So WB flys private jets nowadays. IIRC I first listened to WB when he was a frequent guest on Lou Rukeyser's "Wall Street Week" show back in the early 1990s. I could swear he ridiculed guys with private jets back then.

I really should have kept that Playboy issue where Rukeyser posed in the nude.....

28   Peter P   2008 Apr 17, 1:29am  

I could swear he ridiculed guys with private jets back then.

Yes. He used to "mocked corporate ownership of jets as a wasteful executive perk."

It is absolutely inexcusable to let top executives fly airlines in today's world.

29   Peter P   2008 Apr 17, 1:31am  

there will be no World War to restart the engine

Why the optimism, rustypolymath?

30   HARM   2008 Apr 17, 1:33am  

As you have spelled out, the RE industry is one of the largest advertising segments out there, so they don’t want them getting pissed off.

“It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his NOT understanding it.”
–Upton Sinclair

http://patrick.net/wp/?p=119

31   DennisN   2008 Apr 17, 1:36am  

The REIC may be a big advertiser in print newspapers, but they are much less in evidence in magazine journalism and on-line. I guess that's why that article in TIME (linked above) was OK for them to run.

32   Peter P   2008 Apr 17, 1:41am  

"Hope will ruin you, because it is nothing more than wishful thinking and provides no basis for action."

-- William D. Gann

As a result, hopeful sellers are chasing the market down.

33   GammaRaze   2008 Apr 17, 2:09am  

Someone I know decided to move back to India a few months ago. He sold everything and packed off his kids and wife to India.

However, he is still sitting here alone, to "sell his house".

I am pretty sure he could save himself a lot of trouble, inconvenience and money by just lowering the price, but no one wants to tell him that.

He is hoping that things will turn around and he will get the "right price" for his house.

34   pipeline010   2008 Apr 17, 2:50am  

Real Estate has traditionally been a great investment market, as buying homes have always, on the whole, been a good thing (like Preparation H).

When people see home prices go down they attribute that emotionally with the value of the American dream going down. It also speaks of the American bias against renters.....renters are losers, if you are a homeowner you ARE somebody.

So media caters to homeowners. If you own a home yes it sucks that prices are dropping! If you're like most of us here it's most certainly a good thing, on sooooooooooooo many levels.

For Example: that bee-atch RE whore who refused to even take my offer on a house I bid on to the seller a year ago? Ya, she lost her job 2 weeks ago.

HELL YEA!

35   EBGuy   2008 Apr 17, 3:08am  

DQ numbers showing up in SF Chron Story. Will be interesting to the the country breakdowns later today.
A research firm says the median home price in the San Francisco Bay area has fallen 16 percent over the past year.

DataQuick Information Systems reported Thursday that the median home price in the nine-county area was $536,000, compared to $639,000 in March of 2007, and down almost 20 percent from the peak of $665,000 last summer.

The number of homes sold plummeted 41 percent from a year ago — to 4,898 from 8,317. That makes for the slowest March since the San Diego-based research firm started keeping statistics 20 years ago.

DataQuick says the area has not been hit as hard during the housing crunch as other parts of the state like the Central Valley and inland Southern California.

36   Ed S   2008 Apr 17, 3:12am  

SP,

What a great find! My favorite was

"Basic saw those conditions in 1983-86 and again in 1989-91, first when the market stalled during the presidency of Jimmy Carter, with interest rates near 22 percent, and again during the first Gulf War. "

Wow! And I thought Ronald Reagan was President from 1980 to 1988.

Is anything right in the article?

37   Peter P   2008 Apr 17, 3:22am  

I am pretty sure he could save himself a lot of trouble, inconvenience and money by just lowering the price, but no one wants to tell him that.

It is unlikely he will listen anyway.

This slow-motion market psychology is great educational material.

38   Peter P   2008 Apr 17, 3:34am  

if you are a homeowner you ARE somebody

If you fly airlines, you are still nobody...

39   DennisN   2008 Apr 17, 3:51am  

Sri,

Maybe there's another reason about your friend. Maybe he likes being a Bay Aryan bachelor.

"Sorry, honey, I'll get right back with you and the kids just as soon as this darned house sells." ;)

40   EBGuy   2008 Apr 17, 3:51am  

The Bay Area DQ numbers are out. Looks like they are trying to blame the mix; I think we all know how that will turn out.

Last month's median price would have been closer to $597,000 if the availability of jumbo home loans had remained stable. A year ago jumbo loans, mortgages above $417,000, accounted for 62.2 percent of all Bay Area home loans. Last month they were 29.8 percent.

41   DennisN   2008 Apr 17, 3:57am  

EBG,
I like the comments in the Chron story you linked. He says the DQ numbers can't be right - he went to Zillow and says the prices are up 5%! :)

42   HARM   2008 Apr 17, 4:34am  

If you fly airlines, you are still nobody…

That's a mighty elitist statement there, Mr. P. Do you think that having lots of money, regardless of how you acquired it or use it, automatically makes you "somebody"? Is everyone else below the social pyramid's capstone (supporting that capstone, incidentally) "worthless"?

43   DennisN   2008 Apr 17, 4:39am  

HARM,

If you fly commercial, you will be strip-searched nowadays. So at least from the point of view of the government, you really are a "nobody".

44   HARM   2008 Apr 17, 4:53am  

@DennisN,

I'm not arguing that most Americans don't think that way, or that our Dear Leaders don't think that way. But, *I* don't think that way.

45   Peter P   2008 Apr 17, 5:31am  

That’s a mighty elitist statement there

Worse yet, it is made by a non-elite... but anyway...

Do you think that having lots of money, regardless of how you acquired it or use it, automatically makes you “somebody”?

No, I can still find reasons to make him nobody. :)

Remember, I am a misanthropist. Assigning "worth" to people is not my specialty.

46   Peter P   2008 Apr 17, 5:34am  

It would be elitist to say that renters cling to blogs because they are bitter. :)

47   OO   2008 Apr 17, 7:07am  

Looks like H4 improved this week, Fed still has 548B (only minus 12B from last week) on hand. We are doing great, until the next Bear Stearns blowup that is.

Here is a good Paul O'Neil interview. I find most ex-Secretaries of Treasury to be quite candid, as long as they are no longer in the post.

http://www.bloomberg.com/avp/avp.htm?clipSRC=mms://media2.bloomberg.com/cache/vwyrSX9M2QsQ.asf

48   OO   2008 Apr 17, 7:09am  

Looks like H4 improved this week, Fed still has 548B (only minus 12B from last week) on hand. We are doing great, until the next Bear Stearns blowup that is.

Here is a good Paul O’Neil interview. I find most ex-Secretaries of Treasury to be quite candid, as long as they are no longer in the post.
http://tinyurl.com/5vrmxb

49   Peter P   2008 Apr 17, 7:10am  

We are doing great, until the next Bear Stearns blowup that is.

But how many black swans are still lurking?

50   OO   2008 Apr 17, 7:18am  

People who bitch about the falling housing price are really people who are not financially sound enough to be an owner-occupier to begin with.

House that you live in is a consumption. Although I don't like Kiyosaki in general, I agree with him that whatever asset you live in that is NOT generating any cash flow is a consumption, not an asset. By the same token, the house in which I conduct my daily human activities is just my biggest item of consumption. Even if my house appreciates, to maintain the same standard of living in the same area, I cannot cash out my "gains" and buy another one, because another one will just cost the same!

So, buying a house for owner occupation is NOT an investment. It is a forced saving mechanism, an inflation hedge against rent, and a way to avoid moving every 2 or 3 years.

People who are upset about falling housing price are just those who were not financially established to own their home to begin with. If you are locked in a fixed-rate loan (which you can always refinance if the rate gets lower), and you need to live somewhere, who cares what the housing price is if it moves up or down? You are paying the same monthly expense anyway.

51   Peter P   2008 Apr 17, 7:23am  

A house becomes an asset when you sell it in the future. People are basically moaning about the fall in value of that forward contract.

52   OO   2008 Apr 17, 7:32am  

There's a post on Ticker which talks about how grain price hikes have forced American pig/beef ranchers to liquidate their inventory, which means much more inventory rushing to supermarket shelf in the short term causing lower beef price, but leading to potentially much higher meat price down the road.

I find it very intriguing because this was exactly what already happened in China. About 3 years ago, the increased feed price forced many pig ranchers (much smaller scale over there, 3-100 per ranch) to liquidate their inventory which further dipped the pork price. Pork to the Chinese is like beef to us. Then, a year ago, the whole country started to run out of pork (and there was a pig epidemic going around in certain inland parts), so pork price went up 80% in a matter of months. Now, you'd assume that all the ranchers went back to pig business, right? No, because pig breeders raised their price drastically just to keep in line with the price hike of pork, plus all the pig feed and medicine cost kept rising, so the pig ranchers cut back even further. We all know what pork price will be in China in the next 6 months.

The same situation will happen here. It is really interesting how economics principles are put in practice, many things turn out to be quite counter-intuitive.

53   Peter P   2008 Apr 17, 7:37am  

It is really interesting how economics principles are put in practice, many things turn out to be quite counter-intuitive.

As I have stated many times, one can only analysis economics from a psychological/behavioral perspective.

History is the product of the actions and reactions of human emotion.

54   peng_us   2008 Apr 17, 7:50am  

Rent is still going up in the BA and the interest rate for short to intermediate term saving is going down. Very bad for renters.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/04/17/BUHM107C0Q.DTL

55   Paul189   2008 Apr 17, 7:55am  

How about the Dept. of Commerce?

http://www.commerce.gov/

56   Paul189   2008 Apr 17, 7:58am  

or the Bureau of Industry-

http://www.bis.doc.gov/

58   Paul189   2008 Apr 17, 8:00am  

peng-

Not a problem if your savings is in gold or foreign currencies.

60   BayAreaIdiot   2008 Apr 17, 8:12am  

Very bad for renters.

Not really. It's only kinda bad for renters and that's assuming they're idiots like me keeping everything in $. What's causing the low rates of course is actually so fuc*ing devastating for low equity "owners" it's hilarious to watch. Can't be easy for them, watching at least $5K a month in "equity" evaporate *and* be paying property taxes for the privilege.

61   StuckInBA   2008 Apr 17, 8:41am  

OO,

So should we buy pork bellies futures ? ;-)

But seriously, there are SO few ways to invest in the food trend. That's why all those components of MOO are soaring. I am tired of investing in QQQQ stocks. But I am also scared of all these POT and MON.

I am seriously looking at RJA and DBA.

62   EBGuy   2008 Apr 17, 9:06am  

Looks like H4 improved this week, Fed still has 548B (only minus 12B from last week) on hand.
Sorry, have to be a counterbalance. Yeah, only minus $12B, we can sustain that for a whole year! But then again, Ben IS holding the line. :-)

I was searching for some historic data on the Fed site and came across this gem. Get his, when the country started running surpluses near the end of Pres. Clinton the First's reign, the Fed got antsy as Treasuries were declining as a means to manipulate (excuse me) maintain the Fed funds rate. The FOMC's historical reliance on purchases and sales of Treasury securities to implement monetary policy would be difficult to maintain if large budget surpluses and the associated steep reductions in Treasury debt were to continue. No worries, though, as the report explores other options. A related issue is that, if the Federal Reserve was a large holder of GSE obligations, some market participants might believe that the government would be even more inclined to support the GSEs in the event of financial problems. Such concerns might suggest that any role for GSE assets in System transactions should be limited and established only as part of a System program of diversification.
I also found this pretty interesting: since 1976, the size of the portfolio typically changed no more than about 1.5 percent each day, although the size changed as much as 15 percent on very rare occasions. Bear in mind that the Federal Reserve's portfolio has grown secularly with currency demand, although there is no guarantee that this growth will continue in a predictable way.

63   EBGuy   2008 Apr 17, 9:16am  

leading to potentially much higher meat price down the road

I just watched "King Corn" on PBS a couple of days ago. Basically of visual presentation of Michael Pollan's 'great corn conspiracy'. Does lead one to conclude that maybe higher meat prices down the road wouldn't be such a bad thing.

Hey Stuck, LXU is heat pumps crossed with POT -- what a combo?!

64   OO   2008 Apr 17, 9:56am  

RJA has 5.73% live cattle adn 1.43% rice, both I believe will be big winners. But the problem is, he also has 20 something other agricultural products which may be in different cycle of the boom and bust.

If there is one thing you can count on the Wall Street, you can count on their "innovation" to come up with another Meat ETF for the retail customers.

65   Malcolm   2008 Apr 17, 10:07am  

The Original Bankster Says:
April 17th, 2008 at 2:46 pm
hey everyone,
"What is the best way to get accurate stats on revenue, etc. in the Real Estate Services sector?"

At your local library you can look up industry numbers. I've had to do that a few times for various school marketing projects. There is a system of classification that used to be called SIC and now has a new acronym but you can get some very good information on sales totals, market sizes etc for different industries.

66   OO   2008 Apr 17, 10:08am  

EBGuy,

I don't know if you are referring to corn syrup (have not seen King Corn yet), but I have long suspected its detrimental health effect. I have tried very hard to stay away from processed food with corn syrup and it is HARD. Everything in this country has corn syrup in it, unless you eat fruit and vegetables directly, and cook your food from scratch.

« First        Comments 27 - 66 of 166       Last »     Search these comments

Please register to comment:

api   best comments   contact   latest images   memes   one year ago   random   suggestions   gaiste