Stock owners get leverage too. So don't try and use that argument. Only a moron would leverage a 3% asset (housing) with a 5% loan. Whereas, it makes perfect sense to leverage a 6% asset (stocks) with a 5% loan. Of course, you knew all that, eh?
True...for now, as it is in my neighborhood. However, time on the market has increased dramatically from less than 30 days to about 150 days.
Anybody who says there are areas in US that are immune to RE price declined must be out of their mind. There may be spots where more high end home sales would increase the median prices a bit, but you should see number of sales dropped everywhere. http://www.housingtracker.net/askin...ewJersey-LongIsland/NewYork-WhitePlains-Wayne
http://www.lvrj.com/business/15870347.html My favorite part of this article I link was the math. Total sales in January = 881 Number of houses in foreclosure process = 34,026 That would be nearly 40 months of inventory, just from foreclosures, at the January sales rate. I would say 30-50% decline from these levels in bubble markets. Deep recession time, ask any plasma TV or car salesman.
My wife forks for a top mortgage lender in corporate accounting. And they do not see a way out of this mess. The only hope they have is that government will save us.
The sad part of this entire housing mess is that we tax payers will end up paying for 1: the greed of banks and mortgage lenders for inventing those voo-doo economic loans (bail-out in the works); 2: the greed of Wall Street for making trading vehicles out of them; 3: and stupidity of consumers for buying homes they knew they couldn't afford (partial bail-out in the works). I believe the housing bottom will be in late 2009 to early 2010. Why? The bulk of the subprime mortgages will have expired in that period of time. Also with Ben free-falling interest rates, Large Investors in the Housing Industry will step in and buy beat up homes prices with Ben's cheap money; rent out the properties for 5 years and then sell them and make a good profit.....and the housing cycle repeats..
interesting money magazine article on stocks vs real estate as investments:http://money.cnn.com/galleries/2007/real_estate/0704/gallery.stocks_v_realestate.moneymag/index.html
That in a nutshell is the problem here, what ever happened to thinking of a house as a place to live? In the last few years morons just thought they should tie up the biggest property they could with nothing down...and they would become rich! Now they are trapped as too many people leaned in one direction...the appreciation is not there, they cannot refi, they cannot sell, they cannot make the REAL non-teaser payments. So now they stop paying and wait for the sheriff to throw them out.....multiply this by hundreds of thousands or perhaps millions of cases across the country.
The country stated unraveling when people stopped buying houses as a home to live in and fathers stopped buying thier 9-year old's BB-guns.