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There is that crystal ball again..wish I had one of them thar thangies for me-self.
So far mine has been working. I pulled out of a deal a few months ago because I saw this coming and now the sellers are calling back with a deal $100K below their original asking.
So far mine has been working. I pulled out of a deal a few months ago because I saw this coming and now the sellers are calling back with a deal $100K below their original asking.
Good for you prim2007.
I passed on a property myself a few months ago for reasons other than price but I thought the price was a bit high for the condition of the house. It was listed at $200K then and is currently at $160 and still just sitting.
So far mine has been working. I pulled out of a deal a few months ago because I saw this coming and now the sellers are calling back with a deal $100K below their original asking.
There again. That's because you are more interested in your wallet than finding a nice home for your family.
Well, I didn't think the houses in other states where prices were going through the roof were worth it - I thought that was the manic side of the coin and that people were all acting like a bunch of lemmings paying way more than they should for the properties. Here, we didn't have that, we had a slow, steady rise over time, and so now we're not cratering.
In fact, many places all over the country aren't cratering, but the media kept covering the ones that were as if that was the entire story. Just like all those foreclosures. Last I heard (which was this past week), 96% of the mortgages out there are being paid on time and are not in danger - but it's the 4% that are getting the big splash, and that makes everybody scared.
As the wise economist down at Texas A&M said some time back, "The media thinks that the United States is made up of 5 states - and we're not one of them." Neither are the other 46 states that aren't one of those five. But guess who we hear about? The ones that are having either excessive growth or excessive losses.
I'm not blaming the media exclusively. I'm saying that, by what they choose to cover, they are making a problem into a MUCH worse situation than it had to be and creating panic that doesn't need to be there (well, until the self-fulfilling prophecy kicks in and the panic they created causes a smaller problem to turn into full-blown disaster due to people reacting out of fear). I've acknowledged that it's their job to get eyeballs for the ads in their newspapers and on their websites, and this is part of the problem (journalism just ain't what it used to be, it seems, in too many areas). But that doesn't mean that they can avoid responsibility for the exacerbation of the problem that they cause.
Which is why I said they should be required to print two positive articles, about anything, for every negative article they print. (And not positive filler articles, but equal world count.) I think it would be very interesting to see how things went and if they could generate a positive self-fulfilling prophecy by doing that.
But NAHB, NAR, Case Shiller, OHFHEO are all reports that are featured in the economic news regardless of how the market is doing. Sure, they're louder about it when the numbers are setting records, but that's appropriate. And they reported just as loudly when the numbers were setting records on the way up.
When houses were going up, it was because they were worth so much. But now that they're going down, it's because of the media? Is this the same media that prints the "Showcase of Homes!" section every week with pages and pages of glowing articles and hasn't managed to acknowledge the sheer volume of foreclosure ads in their own classified section with even a paragraph mention? Maybe it's different in your area, but out here, the spin seems like willful denial if anything.
What this reminds me of more than anything is a housing project in Boston that had constant trouble with shootings, stabbings, drugs, etc. They held a rally of their residents to discuss the cause of their problems. You know who they blamed? The media.
I have read and agreed with a lot of your posts. This one isn't among them.
The 629 to 474- where is it? And what's its story? I find it hard to believe that there is not a catch as this is what happens when one is going in foreclosure. In our area, a home that started at $629 might be at 595 or so. But I GURANTEE, unless it IS a foreclosure (which is might rare in our area) then sellers will pull them off the market or pay 2 mortgages if they can't pull them off, LONG before they lower to such extremes. This is a bad and rare example and is NOT the norm in the Chicago land. NOW, if it is far off in the western part of tim-buck-two and was one of those areas where they thought if one suburb could bet over 600, so should we type situation, then I understand. But real estate still holds its own in most affluent areas and this point has been driven in the ground as to why.
As for the media? No "data or proof needed" If you can not figure out what we are talking about where the "media frenzy" plays in, your are truly "out of it". They sensationalize EVERYTHING and we all know it. DO you think they are going to post a picture on the front page of the Wall Street Journnal with anyone smiling because they are happy they are buying up stocks at a deep, deep discount right now, rather than show a picture of a person who looks like they are so distraut they are ready to commit suicide? Of COURSE NOT!!
It's in Deerfield, IL, listed as a "contender" for Money Magazine's 2007 Best Places to live. On a busy road, but set back on a nice piece of land with mature trees. I don't think it's in foreclosure, since I don't see it online for that. I do know it was purchased pre-bubble, because there are no previous sales records with the Lake County Assessor's office online site.
It's not nearly the only example I have. It's just one that came to mind, since the newest price drop is very recent and we really liked the house when we went to the open house. At the time, we felt it was priced too high to not be "perfect" for us. Since then, we've moved on and Deerfield is no longer under consideration.
If you want more, I've got more-- from lots of different suburbs, nice affluent suburbs along the northshore and not in the exburbs. We covered a lot of territory when we first got here. I can't count how many times I've said, "If they'd been asking that price in the spring, we would've bought it." But now they're all chasing the market.
By the way, homes that get pulled off the market don't count for setting current prices. And neither do homes that sit unsold for months and months and months and months. That's one of the reasons this is such a hard market to trust. Very little is selling, so you don't know what the value is. All you know is that with average-days-on-market higher than Miami, FL, the sellers here are drinking some pretty strong Kool-Aid.
Rebuttal again on media "FRENZY"-- I concede usually the media loves a car crash. But go take a look at the Real Estate sections online for the Chicago Tribune, Chicago Sun Times. Count the number of fluff articles about remodeling or green homes or model homes and new subdivisions. What's the ratio to stories about local housing trends and the effect on buyers and sellers. It's a lot more favorable than the 2-to-1 ratio that TexasHorseLady wants. And that doesn't even include special "Housing Sections" that are all sunshine and rainbows. That's because the sponsors are all homebuilders and real estate sites.
I'm sure in some markets, it's different and the local news is really salivating at the housing crisis. But my impression of the Chicago media is that they cow-tow to the real estate industry and make as few waves credibility will allow.
Now is the time to reign in excess spending, save, save, and save some more, as the job losses mount and the stock market continues to drop like a stone.
Why buy a house now?
Because a lot of them are dirt cheap now, and there are those of us who didn't get greedy or stupid in the last few years and actually have money to put into property.
629k to 474.9k:
I'm sure in some markets, it's different and the local news is really salivating at the housing crisis. But my impression of the Chicago media is that they cow-tow to the real estate industry and make as few waves credibility will allow.
I'm in an area that is crashing hard (Southern California) and even here the media isn't particularly negative about housing. In fact, they try to print any positive news they can find even if its completely stupid. The online media is a bit more negative though.
The majority of readers are home owners not buyers or even renters. Any paper, or news program that only prints doom about housing will find its readership down. The mainstream media seems to be tiptoeing around the issue. They don't want to say things that are obviously false anymore (like they did during the boom) but they also don't want to turn off their readers.
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