Not bottomed yet... A few houses remain in the community I live in. You can buy for 373K with 37K rebate at closing, net 336K. Gets reported in the bogus monthly sales data as a sale at 373K not the net of 336K. Gotta keep those comps up! Total BS
Since I buy and hold income producing real estate, I really hope that trickles over here to my neck of the woods. There are a bunch of folks like me just waiting for the price of housing to drop some more so we can justify buying it for rental property. This is what I think is forming a bottom in the low end housing...landlords picking off anything that drops in price where the rents justify the prices. If rents did justify the cost of condos here, I'd be buying them all day long, on fixed notes. SM
Because Junior graduates from college and needs a place to live so he rents a home. Because Sally's job at the factory is going so well she wants to move out and get a place of her own. Because a tiny drop in housing prices, coupled with a slight uptick in interest rates from a year ago mean that house payments are actually higher than they were a year ago, so renting is a good alternative. If the price of steak (house payments) go up, people buy more hotdogs (rent). Because folks reading about a housing bubble popping in their newspaper who get a job transfer have decided to wait for prices to drop more so they aren't buying in their new locale. And lastly, because landlords like me can sell for a nice profit, but we can't find anything we can buy where the rents will cover the note, so we don't buy. Slowly, but surely, the number of properties held by small-time landlords like me have been decreasing because it was like a trap door...you can get out, but you can't get back in. Dwindling supply, and rising demand. Yeah, I'm talking about the "flyover states" here. SM
jasonjm said: right now I can buy condos in los angeles, where the monthly rent will cover the mortgage easily.... --------- and..........if you pick the good areas right now, a nice 3 bedroom 700k condo will rent out for $4k per month?--------? ------- and..........shitty 2 bed house in good area that costs 800k will rent out for $4500 ---------------------------------------------------------- On a 30yr fixed, you are underestimating the mortgage costs by a $500-$1000. You are not including taxes, insurance or maintenance. And I believe you are overestimating rent expectancy by $1500-$2000 per mo. I don't know who would pay $4500 per/mo ($54k annually) rent for a "shitty" 2 bedroom house in West LA or Torrance or wherever you had in mind. Additionally, if you are asking premium rent, you can expect longer periods of vacancy.
Here is a graph of san diego housing prices in the last year. I see no sign of a slowdown in this chart yet.