Decline in Atlanta home prices worst in recorded history (loan, house)

[FlyingFox]

Originally Posted by JoeP

No, there's a lot wrong with the housing market right now. Not everybody bought during the bubble or in bubble related areas.

However, most everybody's value has dropped massively and won't move forward with foreclosures and short sales all over the place.

Because they aren't pricing appropriately.

So, what's the problem? Is it:

A: OMG MY HOUSE CAN'T SELL FOR THE 2006 PRICE THAT I BOUGHT IT FOR!!! IF I WANT TO SELL IT I HAVE TO TAKE A 50% LOSS! I DON'T UNDERSTAND; WHERE DID MY MONEY GO? I WANT SOMEONE TO BUY MY HOME AT THE SAME EXPENSIVE PRICE I PAID!!! SINCE I CANNOT COMPETE WITH THE CURRENT HOUSING MARKET, I MAY WALK AWAY FROM THE HOUSE AND LET THE BANK FORECLOSE.

or is it:

B: I GOT TOTALLY RIPPED OFF IN 2006 WHEN I BOUGHT AN EXTREMELY OVERPRICED HOUSE BASED ON BAD AND POSSIBLY EVEN DECEITFUL INFORMATION FROM MY REAL ESTATE AGENT, HOME APPRAISER, AND MORTGAGE LENDER ALL WORKING IN COLLUSION TO INFLATE HOME PRICES FOR THEIR OWN INTERESTS. I DIDN'T REALIZE IT AT THE TIME BUT NOW I KNOW MY PURCHASE AT THE PRICE I PAID WAS A BIG MISTAKE.


A is not a problem. The home will get sold or foreclosed at a fair market price. B is the problem. Homes were being sold at drastically inflated prices.

Again, there is only a problem if you are still living in a bubble-mindset.

[gearscout]

Back to the original post in this thread...

Originally Posted by DunwoodyPanhandle

US home prices drop for 6th straight month - Yahoo! Finance

I hope this bleak news registers with those who think the decline in Atlanta home prices is simply a "market correction." Home prices in Atlanta are in absolute free fall, threatening to bring the entire local economy down with them.

Do you think real estate prices really fell 17% in ONE month? It's a fluke, probably as a glut of very expensive properties finally forced capitulation by their owners and the banks. Real Estate agents tell me they see renewed interest for the right properties in the right places, with multiple offers.

Yes, prices are down. So I just bought a great Condo downtown for my kid to use for college. My home in Sandy Springs/Dunwoody was paid off years ago and I plan to live here for another 10 years or so.

The bubble burst, we all know that. Prices in Atlanta and elsewhere will take at least 5 years to recover and some may stall below what they cost at the height of excess housing exuberance.

This is not a good time to buy stocks. This is a great time to buy real estate.

[testa50]

Originally Posted by gearscout

Back to the original post in this thread...



Do you think real estate prices really fell 17% in ONE month? It's a fluke, probably as a glut of very expensive properties finally forced capitulation by their owners and the banks. Real Estate agents tell me they see renewed interest for the right properties in the right places, with multiple offers.

Yes, prices are down. So I just bought a great Condo downtown for my kid to use for college. My home in Sandy Springs/Dunwoody was paid off years ago and I plan to live here for another 10 years or so.

The bubble burst, we all know that. Prices in Atlanta and elsewhere will take at least 5 years to recover and some may stall below what they cost at the height of excess housing exuberance.

This is not a good time to buy stocks. This is a great time to buy real estate.

Prices fell 17% year-over-year, not month-over-month.

Congrats on the new condo downtown. Just watch out if your goal is to rent it out--there are typically major restrictions on rentals.

[rcsteiner]

Originally Posted by MovedfromFL

Yep. Look at the prices for places like Mableton. From my research, the demographics have shifted and the local high school is rated very poorly on the major rating sites. I saw listings for $30,000 that looked like stately, family homes! Crazy. Ditto for areas like South Hall County. We lived over that way for 4 years and some folks just got caught when the tide went out. Their old family homestead is now worthless because things have changed.

Yep, southern Mableton is getting hammered. Not quite as bad where we are, but it's not pretty. Of course, there have been crime issues in the southern part of the area since we moved here in 2005 ... that's nothing new, and I'm sure it doesn't help property values any.

[neil0311]

Originally Posted by testa50

Prices fell 17% year-over-year, not month-over-month.

As mentioned earlier, prices did not fall 17% YOY on every house in the metro. Mine has not lost any value in more than a year, based on the appraisal done a few weeks ago for refinancing my mortgage. I had it reassessed by Cobb County for last tax year for an appeal, and it is worth exactly the same now, per the appraisal. All in all, since Sept 2007 when we purchased, the value has come down about 25%. That's 25% in total over 4.5 years from the original purchase price.

The numbers you see in the Case-Shiller and other reports is aggregate.

[gearscout]

Testa50 -- Yes, I see that it was Year on Year now! Still steep...but the housing market is showing signs of life, according to several agents I've spoken with in the past 3 months. It was a short-sale and the process was long, complicated and, at times, frustrating.

Yes, HUGE restrictions. The name of at least one person in the Condo must be on the deed. Since this was purchased as housing for my son, his name is on the deed and he can, of course, have a roommate.

After 3 years, I'll have to revisit. Frankly, I LOVE the place! I want to use it myself. But I have a daughter who may end up in school nearby, too. I think recovery in the market downtown, with high condo fees ($450) and rental restrictions will lag behind the rest of the market. I'm not expecting any real gains in value for 5 years.

[toll_booth]

Originally Posted by JoeP

No, there's a lot wrong with the housing market right now. Not everybody bought during the bubble or in bubble related areas.

However, most everybody's value has dropped massively and won't move forward with foreclosures and short sales all over the place.

This.

The housing market is really hurting the economy, and the foreclosure crisis is really hurting the housing market. Until struggling homeowners can get better relief for their mortgages, and big banks aren't in such a hurry to foreclose, we're going to remain stuck in the mud. Especially when this blame-the-victim society refuses to target the root causes.

[neil0311]

Originally Posted by toll_booth

The housing market is really hurting the economy, and the foreclosure crisis is really hurting the housing market. Until struggling homeowners can get better relief for their mortgages, and big banks aren't in such a hurry to foreclose, we're going to remain stuck in the mud.

The feds have rolled out HARP 1 and HARP 2 and other programs. The state has $300 million from the feds (of borrowed Chinese money) to pay up to 18 months of people's mortgages. There has been an unprecedented reworking of many mortgages to help people stay in their homes, and many of those people still couldn't make the payments and ended up in foreclosure.

Frankly, while I understand the impact of foreclosures on the market, and in some ways the analogy about helping your neighbor put out his burning house because it will save yours rings true, the gov't should not be in the mortgage paying or homeowner bailout business. If you make a bad financial deal or can't pay your bills, then you have to work it out with the bank or take the lumps.

What has happened to this country?

Originally Posted by toll_booth

Especially when this blame-the-victim society refuses to target the root causes.

I wasn't going to comment until I saw this tripe. "Blame the victim." What victim? Someone buys a house that they can't afford or maybe could afford at the time, but then they lose their job, have no backup plan, and it's the evil bank's fault?

What is the bank supposed to do? When did the bank become a charity?

Where is the individual responsibility of the purchaser/homeowner to do their due diligence before they buy, to manage their finances after they buy, and to take their lumps when things go badly? Why is it the bank's problem when you can't pay your bills and how did the person who falls into default become a victim?

This victim mentality just makes me sick to my stomach. It's truly disgusting.

[chalvey]

Originally Posted by neil0311

The state has $300 million from the feds (of borrowed Chinese money) to pay up to 18 months of people's mortgages.

Sorry for going off topic for a second, but China has actually held constant the amount of U.S debt it holds. The difference between the amount China and Japan hold is less than $100 billion.
http://www.treasury.gov/resource-cen...uments/mfh.txt

[toll_booth]

Gonna answer this part first.

Originally Posted by neil0311

I wasn't going to comment until I saw this tripe. "Blame the victim." What victim? Someone buys a house that they can't afford or maybe could afford at the time, but then they lose their job, have no backup plan, and it's the evil bank's fault?

What is the bank supposed to do? When did the bank become a charity?

Where is the individual responsibility of the purchaser/homeowner to do their due diligence before they buy, to manage their finances after they buy, and to take their lumps when things go badly? Why is it the bank's problem when you can't pay your bills and how did the person who falls into default become a victim?

This victim mentality just makes me sick to my stomach. It's truly disgusting.

Neal, you need to stop taking my comments personally. We disagree strongly at times, but that doesn't mean that one of us is an (insert negative adjective here) person. It just means our beliefs on the matter are different. There's no real way to PROVE your or my economic positions, only to support or refute them.

That being said, I'm going to answer some misconceptions here.

The feds have rolled out HARP 1 and HARP 2 and other programs. The state has $300 million from the feds (of borrowed Chinese money) to pay up to 18 months of people's mortgages. There has been an unprecedented reworking of many mortgages to help people stay in their homes, and many of those people still couldn't make the payments and ended up in foreclosure.

Frankly, while I understand the impact of foreclosures on the market, and in some ways the analogy about helping your neighbor put out his burning house because it will save yours rings true, the gov't should not be in the mortgage paying or homeowner bailout business. If you make a bad financial deal or can't pay your bills, then you have to work it out with the bank or take the lumps.

What has happened to this country?

Again. Blaming the victim. You assume, quite incorrectly, that most foreclosures are happening as a direct consequence of people making voluntarily poor decisions with their money. The problem is, it just doesn't turn out that way. Predatory lending is a real thing. Banks knew exactly what they were doing by making subprime loans. Worse, they were not on the hook because of credit default swaps. So they could write those loans, and then when they went bust, wash their hands clean of the fallout.

I think that the housing crisis could have been largely avoided by doing three things during the last couple of decades: (1) Require that all home loans be fixed-rate, period, no exceptions. One of the major problems was interest rates that kept going up, up, up while the economy was starting to slip (it actually began slipping well before September 2008). People just couldn't afford the insane interest. (2) Forbid credit default swaps on home loans. Had banks been on the hook for their bad loans, they would have been much less likely to make them. (3) Not repeal the Glass-Steagall Act. Doing so reduced Wall Street to the world's biggest casino, gambling with people's very livelihoods on a greater scale than before. And just like in Vegas, one's luck can run out...overnight.