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Yeah. There are hundreds of posts that said that the Triangle was immune to the current housing crisis and most of them said that the housing market in the Triangle is not only healthy but "hot" only a few weeks ago. If you want the link to the posts, LMK and I am sure I can find them and will post it for you. If I remember correctly , you started one of those threads. Foreclosures don't increase by 122% in a healthy "hot" market.
Talking about the housing market in general and specifically stating that foreclosures wouln't happen here are two different things. I recognize that one does affect the other, but I never started a thread saying forclosures wouldn't happen here. I have posted in a lot of housing market threads, but if you can find one I started that says foreclosures wouln't happen here be sure and let me know.
By the way, most of my posts are about housing in my price range. While the local market in some areas is taking it's lumps, people in my range still find it difficult to find a nice house in a nice area for under $175K. I can definitely show you recent posts that illustrate that point.
You are in a price range that is way way more than mine. Maybe things aren't very competetive in the range you are looking in, but they certainly are in mine ..... even with the increase in foreclosures.
Last edited by North_Raleigh_Guy; 02-13-2008 at 01:43 PM..
But just let one of those sharks bite someone (hopefully not you) in your area or on your coast or in your country even and the press picks up the story and makes it front page news. Next thing you know your afraid to even drive along a coastal highway without fear of a shark jumping out of the ocean and biting you.
I really loved that shark bite analogy. I got a good chuckle from the mental picture of a shark jumping across the road and through a car windshield to bite a passing motorist!
Sadly, many people will believe anything they hear from a media that is seemingly less and less trustworthy (you have to ask: when Britney's every move becomes news, can we really consider 'news' to still be news?). This is true about so many important things in our society, from foreclosures (they've always been out there, just more lately) to politics.
Low cost of living and having a good job don't amount to a hill of beans if you bought a house that was beyond your means.
One doesn't necissarily have anything to do with the other.
Precisely. The biggest travesty of this housing crisis is the fact that too many people bought too many houses they could not afford that had been overpriced to begin with. And while banks and mortgage companies and real estate brokers made money hand over foot, those of us who live by the Ben Franklin school of thought (a penny saved is a penny earned) are now caught in the downward spiral of economic recession along with those who are defaulting on their $675,000 home when they make $90,000/year and want the government to bail them out! (a scenario I read about a family in CA) :
My dad is a realtor and he says the same things...
Realtors sure do like to claim a monopoly on the "truth" about the housing market, don't they?
One way to "get in over your head" is make a large family move across the country to an unfamiliar place where you hear the job market is good, then buying a house before you get that good job you were after. People are figuring out that the Triangle job market didn't grow as fast as the population which had it in their head they were going to get a bigger house for cheaper than New Jersey and that they were definitely going to have the means to pay for it.
Since this is apparently affecting Cary too, how can anyone write it all off as "subprime?" How many subprime loans went to people buying houses in Cary?
It's a shame that normal people who didn't sell a house in CA or the Northeast for 2-3 times what that house would typically sell for in NC now can't buy a house any closer in than Clayton, if they're lucky, and the tight credit market has made things harder for first-time homebuyers anyway. Just about to the point that it might be a good idea to put off being a first-time homebuyer to begin with, no matter what the realtors say, and no matter where you live.
You also have to wonder if this is going to trigger a wave of speculation for rental properties anticipating more renters after foreclosures. This is of course assuming the government doesn't drop interest rates so everyone can have credit again, repeating the whole cycle to complete another 5-7 years from now in the name of short-term economic relief. Or that the government doesn't bail everyone out and reward everybody for their greed and foolishness, from the banks and lenders to the realtors and builders to the crowds of people smitten with owning an oversized house they can't pay for. They're ultimately the ones enabling the whole thing, whether they're in Raleigh or in Stockton, California.
I'm not in the industry, but I think its a combination of people buying more house than they can really afford, having Adjustable rate mortgages and refinancing and getting second and third mortg's. Then you have sub prime lenders giving loans to people who really can't afford it and live paycheck to paycheck with no savings, it further complicates things.
I really don't think any ONE thing can be blamed as the cause, but when you compile all of these issues in a volatile economy right now, its causing people to lose their homes.
The mortgages that readjust are just asking for trouble IMO.....no one can predict what their finacial situation will be in the next 5 /10 years, only speculate and I feel many lenders misled people who wanted more now but couldn't quite afford it today.....have we not all been lured by the "I'll gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today" sentiment ala Wimpie?
Or at least those of us old enough to know who I'm referring to!
I really loved that shark bite analogy. I got a good chuckle from the mental picture of a shark jumping across the road and through a car windshield to bite a passing motorist!
Sadly, many people will believe anything they hear from a media that is seemingly less and less trustworthy (you have to ask: when Britney's every move becomes news, can we really consider 'news' to still be news?). This is true about so many important things in our society, from foreclosures (they've always been out there, just more lately) to politics.
If we truly knew how much the media sways public opinion/outlook in our lives, we would unplug every TV, computer, cell phone and stop any delivery of magazines and newspapers.....I think our ancestors had it much better in this instance: by the time they got the letter with bad news in it via pony express, it had already been resolved!
Bad lending practices allowed people to get way over their heads especially using mortgage products designed for sophisticated investors, not average families.
I was once in banking and would never recommend to a family to take a loan that would put them one step away from financial ruin.
Why would anyone be opposed to the media publishing factual information? Just because there are no positive stats for real estate (aside from "we're still better than southern CA") doesn't mean that reporting them truthfully is unbalanced or unfair.
Factual information is all relative. The N&O could have chosen to report that Raleigh/Cary had the lowest foreclosure rate of the NC cities in the study. They could have reported that the rate was in in the bottom half of the cities studied nationally. They even could have reported neither and only identified the top ten cities and bottom ten for foreclosures like is often done in national reports. But, no....that wouldn't be sensational enough to grab a reader's attention. The fact that the rate increased 122% (year over year) in a rapidly expanding market where there are likely to be many more newer loans and still be ranked 53rd out of 100 is pretty darn interesting story to me. Also, I would suspect that the "ground swell" of foreclosure activity came late to NC in general and Raleigh/Cary specifically and that many of the other cities on the list are increasing their rates from ones that had already climbed dramtically the year prior. This isn't the case in Raleigh and the other "non-headline" data only goes to support that argument. We are not even in the top half of cities nationally for foreclosures! I suspect that, if you compare us just against the rapidly expanding markets nationally, that we'd look even better statistically. I'd put my money that most of the foreclosure activity is highly related to lenders using teaser rates to entice buyers into properties that they couldn't really afford. Then, the buyer got caught when they were unable to re-finance.
I don't think the issue locally is about price corrections since the area didn't partake in the insane run-up of values (double and triple) that swept Florida, California, New Jersey, Nevada, etc.
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