Housing crisis - An election scam by the media? (spokesman, gasoline, president)
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
The housing slump is regional and within markets. My area is seeing an uptick and in my development prices are going back up and the houses are selling. Houses that the builder was discounting three months ago are back to the original price and selling. They are building away again. Bad news sells. We always focus on those failing even if the majority are succeeding.
The housing slump is regional and within markets. My area is seeing an uptick and in my development prices are going back up and the houses are selling. Houses that the builder was discounting three months ago are back to the original price and selling. They are building away again. Bad news sells. We always focus on those failing even if the majority are succeeding.
This is true. In MI housing is very depressed, like the economy We have three or four foreclosures in our immediate area alone. Very bad.
Tuborg if I could I would give you a rep point. Your comments are so true especially about the media and how they love to play up the bad news and not the good. Trust me when I say because I was in the news business for years "if it bleeds, it leads."
Well, I think accurately and completely reporting bad news is fine, I just object to the spin in reporting the economic news.
I'll give you some examples of what I mean here.
If housing prices are tanking, they not only report this but also get a spokesman who says it will get worse before it gets better.
If housing prices stop declining and hold steady, they find a spokesman who says this is a momentary blip, and the declines will continue in the future.
Similar reporting takes place on interest rates and inflation too.
I guess if they say it long and loud enough, Americans will believe that the housing market is on the verge of collapse.
Is it just another drumbeat by the media trying to depress and convince the electorate that the economy and housing crisis is collapsing?
Ya sure, all those who lost houses were just pretending....pretty soon they hold a press conference and all those people will yell, "NEVEMIND!, JUST KIDDING"
I don't know about everyone else's area but Raleigh/Durham has slowed down dramatically over the last year. I have been home for the last 3 weeks trying to find work that just isn't there. Maybe it is sporadic as an earlier poster eluded to but Raleigh is a fast growing area and you would think we would be one of the last to slow down. Or maybe our slowdown is nothing compared to other places around the country. I hate to think that is the case because if it is there are going to be a lot of hungry families come this winter.
95% of homeowners are paying their mortgages. I don't consider the 5% of idiots who jumped into an ARM get-rich-quick scheme to be a "crisis." The only real economic crisis we have right now is the price of gasoline.
I work in the new home building industry. While this may have been the case at first, and some markets saw slower pullbacks than others, it is not confined anymore. An article today on Yahoo! News said that of a 20 city index across the country, not one city had positive growth for the last period.
There is no "collapse" though, housing prices are going to continue to drop but this is natural. People relied far too heavily on the seemingly endless upward climb in prices in the 90's and didn't realize that value can go DOWN too... Buying a house will increasingly seem like a GOOD investment because it's a buyer's market. However, buying a house should always be more about finding a home than an investment tool.
The hard part of the whole thing is that mortgage companies were constantly selling the equity loans on the idea that the home were worth more than when you bought them, not equity loans based on real equity. So new home buyers used those equity lines to finish the houses and now, especially in Las Vegas, we see our friends who were very frugal in comparison to some, with homes that are barely worth what they paid for them, let alone any equity they borrowed on. Most are ok because they did not max out on the equity and used the money to pay down higher cards or car loans, rather than purchasing toys or vacations, etc.
I work in the new home building industry. While this may have been the case at first, and some markets saw slower pullbacks than others, it is not confined anymore. An article today on Yahoo! News said that of a 20 city index across the country, not one city had positive growth for the last period.
There is no "collapse" though, housing prices are going to continue to drop but this is natural. People relied far too heavily on the seemingly endless upward climb in prices in the 90's and didn't realize that value can go DOWN too... Buying a house will increasingly seem like a GOOD investment because it's a buyer's market. However, buying a house should always be more about finding a home than an investment tool.
I agree. We bought a house to live in, not as our main moneymaker. The people responding to the Rasmussen Report must be living in a dream world and not trying to sell houses. We visited 7 or 8 open houses in Portland to see what was on the market and never saw any other shoppers. Last year at this time there would have shoppers in every house. Every house had dropped prices at least once, some on the third reduction. One real estate guy told us they had three offers on one house and every one fell through because buyers couldn't get financing. I live in a stable suburban neighborhood close to downtown Portland and houses are not selling. Latest reports indicate we're back to 2004 prices.
S&P: US home prices fall in April at record rate - Salon.com | News Wires (http://www.salon.com/wires/ap/business/2008/06/24/D91GF3HO1_home_prices/print.html - broken link)
U.S. home prices tumbled in April at the fastest rate since a widely followed index was begun in 2000 with all 20 metropolitan areas surveyed posting annual declines for the first time.
The Standard & Poor's/Case-Shiller home price index of 20 cities fell by 15.3 percent in April versus a year ago, according to Tuesday's report. Prices nationwide are at levels not seen since August 2004.
Story Not Found (http://www.marketwatch.com/News/Story/Story.aspx? - broken link)
Clips:
guid=%7BEB1B0595%2D37FA%2D4542%2D88A2%2DCE470ACAF1 01%7D
Here's the city-by-city breakdown in the Case-Shiller index:
Las Vegas, down 26.8% in the past year; Miami, down 26.7%; Phoenix, down 25%; Los Angeles, down 23.1%; San Diego, down 22.4%; San Francisco, down 22.1%; Tampa, down 20.4%; Detroit, down 18%; Minneapolis, down 15.5%; Washington, down 14.8%; Chicago, down 9.3%; New York, down 8.4%; Atlanta, down 7.5%; Cleveland, down 6.8%; Boston, down 6.4%; Seattle, down 4.9%; Denver and Portland, both down 4.7%; Dallas, down 3.4%; and Charlotte, down 0.1%.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
We have three or four foreclosures in our immediate area alone.
