sure people buy a hiouse to live in it, and tax laws benefit homemoaners too boot. but when you hear stories of people with under $1,000 in lifetime savings buying homes, you are seeing the start of trouble. i'd argue that we have seen massive under-employment and disclocations w/in the labor markets. what does the real agent or mortgage whore do when they cant generate commissions? im seeing 40+ yo bag boys at the grocery store, he is employed, and although and extreme example, he is certainly under-employed. i posted before about the electrical engineer that is bouncing around jobs, and believe me she is brialliant and smoking hot. i went into my buddy's shop & an airline pilot was working for free and a software engineer, tired of getting made redundant, was working as a trainee. if you can hire, you can get good people at relatively cheap wages. overall, i agree with you on the surface, we have low unemployment and rates that allow most homemoanership. i have noted equity lines near 8% now, where they have been near 6%. CC usage is up again, as the home equity spiggots are closing. i agree with your insights, but i believe people have been living beyond their means for too long, and the bill is coming due. wait until the mass psychology is that prices are decreasing, you gonna see a country sitting on their hands. if the chinese come bargain shopping ala japan circa 1989, then we have another leg up before the rug gets pulled. i want to buy a nicer home & a 740 BMW, but i see auctions in teh future, so im waiting.
LOL. You're not kidding. Even the logic the piker kid follows is hilarious. Soros disagrees with Bush, therefore Soros Bad. It's easy to call out a piker from those who actually have a shot at trading sucess. Pikers lack critical thinking abilities. These people are easily suceptible to cult worship like those who worshipped Jim Jones. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Jones Soros saw first hand the results of Fascism. I'm sure he knows what he's talking about when he talks about Fascism in America.
You boys have missed the point both successfully and entirely. Where the economy goes and where the housing market goes will unravel itself in the fullness of time. The question is not what Soros says, partly because it may not be what he thinks and partly because he just may be wrong in principle or timing. What matters the most is what you think and therefore what you are prepared to do both to survive and profit from the coming changes.
The housing boom will end when the Jackass' who went out and got "interest only" mortgages on their homes start running for the exits. All exhastion gaps have an apex somwhere..
I use to make my living by approaching people who were about to be foreclosed upon and offering them a deal to stick some money in their pockets if they signed the deed over to me just before final action was taken against them. Mostly, these were in property tax cases. Food for thought to the savvy minded.
I cannot understand this, everybody knows that we are headed for a correction in housing. In Fla, some houses appreciated 500k in 7 years, that is stupid. 8 months ago you could not touch a house in certain areas for less than 800k, now people hope to get 500k. No need to look that hard, or use advanced math to figure this out. Interest rates go down, real estate demand goes up and prices go up. Interest rates go up, real estate sales go down which leads to lower prices. We have already seen the top, now can somebody tell us where is the bottom, and when will it hit, I doubt it. Folks this is not Moses come down from the mountain. I remember what they said about the tech bubble, it is different this time, NOT. Real estate will retrace. But again how far and when, who knows. And as far as Mr. Soros, his statement is a mastery of the obvious. The Ever Practical VIPER
Tech bubble was 80% decline , run of you mill cyclical bubble which I believe is still being wrung out of the system as de dollar continues its muscle flexing.....steroids
case proved,cindy sheehan thought quality Published on Tuesday, August 15, 2006 by the Wall Street Journal A Self-Defeating War by George Soros The war on terror is a false metaphor that has led to counterproductive and self-defeating policies. Five years after 9/11, a misleading figure of speech applied literally has unleashed a real war fought on several fronts -- Iraq, Gaza, Lebanon, Afghanistan, Somalia -- a war that has killed thousands of innocent civilians and enraged millions around the world. Yet al Qaeda has not been subdued; a plot that could have claimed more victims than 9/11 has just been foiled by the vigilance of British intelligence. Unfortunately, the "war on terror" metaphor was uncritically accepted by the American public as the obvious response to 9/11. It is now widely admitted that the invasion of Iraq was a blunder. But the war on terror remains the frame into which American policy has to fit. Most Democratic politicians subscribe to it for fear of being tagged as weak on defense. What makes the war on terror self-defeating? First, war by its very nature creates innocent victims. A war waged against terrorists is even more likely to claim innocent victims because terrorists tend to keep their whereabouts hidden. The deaths, injuries and humiliation of civilians generate rage and resentment among their families and communities that in turn serves to build support for terrorists. Second, terrorism is an abstraction. It lumps together all political movements that use terrorist tactics. Al Qaeda, Hamas, Hezbollah, the Sunni insurrection and the Mahdi army in Iraq are very different forces, but President Bush's global war on terror prevents us from differentiating between them and dealing with them accordingly. It inhibits much-needed negotiations with Iran and Syria because they are states that support terrorist groups. Third, the war on terror emphasizes military action while most territorial conflicts require political solutions. And, as the British have shown, al Qaeda is best dealt with by good intelligence. The war on terror increases the terrorist threat and makes the task of the intelligence agencies more difficult. Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri are still at large; we need to focus on finding them, and preventing attacks like the one foiled in England. Fourth, the war on terror drives a wedge between "us" and "them." We are innocent victims. They are perpetrators. But we fail to notice that we also become perpetrators in the process; the rest of the world, however, does notice. That is how such a wide gap has arisen between America and much of the world. Taken together, these four factors ensure that the war on terror cannot be won. An endless war waged against an unseen enemy is doing great damage to our power and prestige abroad and to our open society at home. It has led to a dangerous extension of executive powers; it has tarnished our adherence to universal human rights; it has inhibited the critical process that is at the heart of an open society; and it has cost a lot of money. Most importantly, it has diverted attention from other urgent tasks that require American leadership, such as finishing the job we so correctly began in Afghanistan, addressing the looming global energy crisis, and dealing with nuclear proliferation. With American influence at low ebb, the world is in danger of sliding into a vicious circle of escalating violence. We can escape it only if we Americans repudiate the war on terror as a false metaphor. If we persevere on the wrong course, the situation will continue to deteriorate. It is not our will that is being tested, but our understanding of reality. It is painful to admit that our current predicaments are brought about by our own misconceptions. However, not admitting it is bound to prove even more painful in the long run. The strength of an open society lies in its ability to recognize and correct its mistakes. This is the test that confronts us. Mr. Soros, a financier, is author of "The Age of Fallibility: Consequences of the War on Terror" (Public Affairs, 2006). © Copyright 2006 Wall Street Journal
The real estate market researchers in my company have become very bearish recently. Until early this year, they were still bullish. According to a presentation they gave, there were just too much factors working against the housing market, like the vanishing momentum, historically low housing affordability, the increasingly risker loans, the rising sale volume/house for sale ratio, etc. The only positive factor they see is the still strong immigration.