Another risk with condos is you may not be able to get financing. FNMA has rules regarding number of investor owned (read: NON owner occupied) units. If the project exceeds this number, secondary market financing is nearly impossible to get.....Fannie won't buy the mortgage. Another thing I'm seeing in Vegas with all the apartment to condo conversions is the maintenance fees are low balled to entice buyers.
On the other side my brother just got a full price offer for his place last week 100% appreciation in 4 years -- Ventura County, CA.
When the KING of condos JOrge Perez from The Related Group pulls out of Vegas you best hit the bid asap...he pulled out of Vegas entirely ( his partner george clooney )
interesting thought. if the housing market is on the verge of a bubble pop why are the home mortgage stocks hitting new highs? they should be like the canary in the coal mine indicator. check out cfc, nde, lend, new, nly.
I certainly wouldn't attempt to call the topping or popping of the bubble, although I can't help but believe that we are firmly entrenched in one. So, let me ask you this: what kind of lead time might you expect from these home mortgage stocks if and when the time comes? Further, since I am not familiar with their historical relationship, do you know if and by how much home mortage stocks led real estate price downturns in the past?
For the same reason Internet stocks continued to go up into March 2000 - there are still more optimists who believe in the boom than there are realists who foresee a change in trend. So, would you buy those stocks here?
Its not on the verge, its in the process of an unwinding. I dont know how carefully you follow local real estate markets, or the national picture, but inventory is skyrocketing in many locales. Residential homebuilder stocks have taken a sizeable hit since last July. I think it is somewhat myopic to believe that mortgage stocks are representative of the real estate market as a whole. As Pabst said yesterday, most every sector rallied on this liquidity rally. You might also consider that alot of the hot money just flew into these mortgage stocks and similar sectors based on the umpteenth declaration by the Fed cronies that they would not raise rates for the duration.
The CPI advanced 0.4% in March vs. an expected 0.3% rise, but the core number, excluding food and energy, really caught the market's attention. Core inflation increased 0.3% last month vs. expectations for a 0.2% gain, mostly the result of a slowing housing market that boosted rental costs to their highest levels in over four years. http://www.thestreet.com/_tscs/markets/commodities/10280139.html
I don't know about the other stocks, but I did pick up some nly earlier this year. It is a mortgage stock in the sense that they buy MBS, but really, their fortunes are tied to the yield curve far more than the health of the housing industry. They got crushed in the past year w/the flat/inverted yield cuve, but I expect them to do well over the next few years as the yield curve steepens. I wouldn't say nly is at a new high (it is probably about 40% beneath its alltime high). It certainly has had a nice rally the past few days, but, again, it is due to the steepening of the yield curve.