[talbet]

Home values in Petoskey have plunged from a median value of 192k to 122k and units sold are down over 22% year over year. The news just keeps getting worse. It will not be long and the north will be like Detroit and people buying homes for five thousand. There does not look like much light at the end of the tunnel for michigan.

[dotdash]

Why aren't renters taking the government's $8000 incentive to get a home at the bottom of the market? The payment on a 30 yr fixed $100,000 mortgage is $550 a month or less -- with the mortgage tax deduction, etc., doesn't that have to be a better deal than renting?

Warren Buffett said the key is to be scared when others are greedy (I guess that was 2006) and to be greedy when others are scared (like now). Surely, buying a house now at the bottom of the cliff will pay off down the line?

[zthatzmanz28]

Whose giving loans? Heard of people with 35K down payment and still cannot get a loan?

[dotdash]

Do you think that difficulty getting a mortgage is the problem, or do you think it's fear on the part of potential homebuyers? It seems so unfair that regular people are not able to take advantage of the combination of low housing prices and low mortgage rates. It'll be only the wealthy who can capitalize on the situation, sadly.

[eandcdavis]

Who is giving loans is actually a moot point. The real question here is... who in Michigan can afford to buy ANY house right now, and beyond that, how many people are actually left here TO buy a house?

[jeeg]

We will still be here and are actually house shopping right now

Loans are obviously being given out still. In addition to ourselves, I know a few people who have purchased a house this year and a couple more (including my mother last week) who have refinanced their current home at a better rate.

[Bydand]

I bought a new home last year as well. So did at least 3 other families on my street in town that I know of because they have all moved in after we did. Most of the homes were not sold because they HAD to be, but because they were owned by older people who either died, or moved into assisted living. No problem with getting a loan either, and it isn't like we had a barrel of cash sitting around for a down payment.

[Hungry Brain]

Property values are way down in the suburbs of Detroit too. I bought my house in about 2000, so at least I didn't buy it at the peak.

[preferentialtreatment]

It`s the wealthy who have the credit to buy them without much hassle.Add in there the dollar devaluation and what a lovely carnage it is.Good riddance.

[Sparrow_temp]

It's unemployment and the fear of being unemployed which is the reason why more people are not buying houses at what seems to be a bottom in the housing market. If you're in a small community with the potential of being laid off -- you're completely trapped if you have a house. You can't go to where the next job is. The housing market will naturally recover when the unemployment rate drops. A lot of people in the know aren't really expecting the unemployment rate to get better anytime soon. The last recession had mostly a jobless recovery with the exception of the medical and housing markets.

There's also a lot of speculation that this recession may be a double-dip recession. What exactly has the Fed fixed? Trillions of dollars have been put into the financial markets and we're still not seeing a lot of growth. If the commercial housing market collapses, things will look worse than a year ago. We're basically financing our debt now by simply printing more money so inflation cannot be far off. Are people really optimistic about this country's financial future?