Home prices near a double dip (6 straight months of decline) (wage, salaries)

[california-jewel]

Originally Posted by Boxcar Overkill

Good news for first time home buyers.

Yeah if they have good credit and all, still very important factor. Not good news, for someone who has got to sell right now, really bad timing.
And with values continuing to dip further, not good news at all. Need a good housing market, to get this economy going.

[summers73]

Originally Posted by california-jewel

Yeah if they have good credit and all, still very important factor. Not good news, for someone who has got to sell right now, really bad timing.
And with values continuing to dip further, not good news at all. Need a good housing market, to get this economy going.

I disagree. This economy needs affordable houses, and nothing gets affordability back up like people buying homes free and clear of mortgages.

[harborlady]

Originally Posted by Boxcar Overkill

Do we really want the whole country to be like San Fran, Manhattan or Honolulu, where housing is so expensive people are advertising room shares? Not house shares, room shares?

Not me.

Cost of housing probably still needs correcting in lots of places around the country.

2 1/2 X median family income should be the median cost of housing.

Let the working class folks afford a house that doesn't eat up their entire pay check.

Glad you're paying attention. This housing nightmare decimated rural culture of suffolk county long island. Natives who used to live there have had mass exodus since 80's, thanks to foreign/ out of state investors. People see those demographics and try to claim it's all about taxation, but reality is they were priced out of their own home towns. My classmates of yesteryear scattered to the wind in NC, TN, CO, FL, VA etc. I'm in WV. They ran off salt of the earth folks. Same exact thing happened in the hills of NC so I'm told. A few natives saw NY money coming, went for a ride to feather their nests, but it all came at the expense of the overall NC native culture. Sad, really.

Rough sketch of reality math back when things were sane- 2 & 1/2 mean wages should be at or below sticker price. Long Island saw an overabundance of McMansions the overwhelming majority couldn't afford to live in. A foreign investor renting out to 2 dozen illegal immigrants crowding into it, yes, but not normal people.

Since income is the least likely to rise, market price of housing must come down to meet real wages. No more twinkies. If it doesn't, expect squatters & eat the rich to rule. Expect that the most economical way to deal with elaborate webs of deceptive practices leaving ordinary citizens with a mortgage underwater is to commit arson. One man in Ohio bulldozed his house. Another man in California dismantled his house from inside out. There have been spates of murder targeting real estate agents all over the country. I'm not condoning any of that behavior, however, no justice no peace will become the rule, not the exception, if those instrumental to this reckless profiteering are not held accountable.

Forward thinking with prevention in mind- I think it best for local ordinances/ states to draft protective legislation. House flippers and greedy developers running amok forced to live in the nightmare they create would be a big help. That's how old school judges in NYC dealt with slum lords in NYC. Nothing so lights a fire under their behinds getting the lead out of plumbing than having to dodge rat/ roach population while trudging up 8 flights of stairs with gallons of potable water. Miracle or miracles- much swifter eviction notices came to those dealing drugs inviting violence into the building & pilfering his contractors tools. Prior to that judicial treatment those very same owners were satisfied to have a vacancy filled. Nothing else worthy of consideration in their ledger books.

[harborlady]

Originally Posted by JazzyTallGuy

First we need to get rid of this mythic notion THAT EVERYBODY SHOULD OWN A HOME.

That notion was promulgated by neocons. Nothing about HUD, freddie mac, fannie mae, VA housing, etc etc, was ever intended to 'gift' home ownership to anyone. Deregulation allowed these programs to be abused beyond their intended purpose. Deliberately driving a car into a tree via malevolent policy should not equal abolishing cars.

Originally Posted by JazzyTallGuy

Second, minimum wages that are too high would at some point discourage hiring. The economic reality is some jobs in any economic are low paying jobs. If a person wants a better paying job the first thing they need is the motivation to educate and work toward getting a better job.

When crony market policies favoring ubber wealth by keeping a boot on the head of labor persist, expect that CPA, engineer, and Doctor will be making minimum wage. There's no motive for anyone to educate themselves or strive at all so long as this policy persists.

Originally Posted by JazzyTallGuy

The next thing they should have availability for funding and the opportunity to get an education. Instead of increasing minimum wages we should be increasing access to hire education. Its the best way to get people higher paying jobs and the return on investment to the country in terms of having more tax revenue and to economy in terms of having more middle and high wage earners consumers and fewer people needing social services.

There are no consumers so long as wages are suppressed. When people can't afford to live where they work, market correction should mean wages go up, but policies geared to satisfy greedy ultimately ruin whole communities. There's zero incentive or punishment for employers to keep employees out of the brackets of social services. Undercut military pay to feather the nest of contractors, you'll inevitably find military families eligible for food stamps.
Higher education has zero value unless a job is waiting for you once you graduate. This only feeds the anti gravity machine sucking up national resources to the top 1%. The dumber you make the masses, the more easily controlled and fleeced.

[Bideshi]

This disaster has only just begun.

[harborlady]

Originally Posted by newonecoming2

I don’t care about who buys or doesn’t buy a house. I want the economy growing and to get that we need housing prices going up. In order to get that you need more demand and we are way over built as it is so we need more buyers for our existing homes.

If the cost of building a home exceeds the price it can fetch, ie no one can afford to live in it, it will be sold at loss or passed around like a hot potato in toxic securities packaging.
Builders are better suited retooling more of their work repairing existing structures rather than building new. Developers are better suited buying dilapidated housing at fire sale prices & razing it for new construction in keeping with mean wages. The rest need to find a real job because they're only digging a deeper hole for all parties concerned. Solve it at the local level restricting new construction. No excuses building McMansions if legit buyers aren't sponsoring it's construction. "Investors" (afar) are a much different breed of animal than "Owner occupants" (living in it).

Originally Posted by newonecoming2

If you up the minimum wage to $30/hr everyone with a full time job even the teenagers would have the income to be able to buy a $180k house.

$30 hr would guarantee all people forced to work for corporations, and abolish small business save for those self employed zero hires. I'm vehemently against your myopic quick fix scheme. Your defense of market pricing being inflated is the problem. Market correction= eat your veggies, the twinkies are killing you & your neighborhood.

Originally Posted by newonecoming2

That is why we would need to put a large amount of cash into the consumers pockets without there being a corisponding bump in debt.

You only need to remove the boot off labors head. Federal gov't is being puppet controlled by malevolent forces corrupting the republican party. Their party is experiencing a hostile take over, and America itself is experiencing a hostile takeover the longer that republican chair is permitted to be abused.

Originally Posted by newonecoming2

Have you looked at the wealth distribution in the US over the last 40 years? In 1981 there was a discontinuity in the curve. The rich started getting richer faster. Upping the minimum wage will or should tend to reverse this trend

A silent war was declared on middle class, upward mobility reserved for those operating in the alternative economy; the board room & wall street collecting tolls coming and going.

Research the full implications of naked short selling. It's literally killing legitimate commerce & favoring organized crime hiding under the cloak of a corporation. Research the full economic impact of neglecting global trade imbalance. Who EXACTLY sponsored that policy? The top 10% wealth in USA today have little to no allegiance to their own country. They would just assume abandon citizenship entirely if they had to endure the 'oppression' of personal accountability. Chenney would much prefer to live in Dubai where piracy, slavery and prostitution are embraced with abandon. This is what's passing for leadership in America and it needs a permanent eviction notice.

[harborlady]

Originally Posted by summers73

I disagree. This economy needs affordable houses, and nothing gets affordability back up like people buying homes free and clear of mortgages.

That's exactly what I did. Unlike Jaggy, I refused to enter into a mortgage agreement. It's a raw deal. If a 100k home through the magic of banks has it's sticker price transformed to 300k, it's no guarantee that house will be worth 300k in the end. They make their money up front, they could care less about anything else. When sociopaths can make a buck deleting their very operating system, they do it. Moral hazard 101.

Offsetting inflation- if you can present tense afford to buy all the high ticket item durable goods you'll need for long term security, that's the sanest use of disposable income I can suggest for ordinary folks. That and perhaps padding 401k accounts more. The latter is a gamble, though, particularly in this wild wild west climate abusing legitimate corps leaving shareholders & employees alike taking all the 'socialized' losses. "Leadership" authorizing itself zero accountability & sky is the limit front loaded salaries has inevitable consequences.

[Randomstudent]

Originally Posted by burdell

Rent for 20 years and what do you have but a stack of receipts, I'd rather have built up equity. And how do you plave a value on having a place of your own vs. having to answer to someone else? That math's not so simple.

That's all well and good if you plan on living in the same place for 20 years, but if you move frequently its much better to rent. If you frequently need to move the closing costs + front loaded interest on a mortgage will devour your equity and then some.

It really depends on the person. I wouldn't buy a home unless I knew I was going to stay there for years to come and I could pay it off on a 15yr mortgage or better.

[parfleche]

Many areas will never recover due to the property taxes one must pay to own a home. I know some people who pay more per month than I pay a year in prop taxes. home for sale 500$, take over taxes

[newonecoming2]

Originally Posted by harborlady

If the cost of building a home exceeds the price it can fetch, ie no one can afford to live in it, it will be sold at loss or passed around like a hot potato in toxic securities packaging.

The housing bubble was fueled by the printing of money (by foreign central banks) and the use of that money to buy US personal debt with. The amount that was printed worldwide for this purpose was $7 trillion. This is what drove the bad decision making that was in the latter stages of the housing bubble. I’m talking about the fraud that was perpetrated to keep the bubble going.

Originally Posted by harborlady

Builders are better suited retooling more of their work repairing existing structures rather than building new.

I’m not saying that they aren’t

Originally Posted by harborlady

Developers are better suited buying dilapidated housing at fire sale prices & razing it for new construction in keeping with mean wages.

I’m talking about raising mean wages by inflation so that we can undo the damage to the economy done by the foreign printing of money and the debts resulting from that money being run through the US economy.

Originally Posted by harborlady

The rest need to find a real job

With unemployment being paid out for an unemployment rate of over 17% as of Nov of 2010 where are they going to find a real job? Take the historic unemployment rate and the historic pay out and divide the current payout by the historic payout and multiply the result by the historic unemployment rate and you get to see just how big o lie the unemployment figures are.

Originally Posted by harborlady

because they're only digging a deeper hole for all parties concerned.

Re-blowing bubbles is the worst thing that you can do.

Originally Posted by harborlady

Solve it at the local level restricting new construction. No excuses building McMansions if legit buyers aren't sponsoring it's construction. "Investors" (afar) are a much different breed of animal than "Owner occupants" (living in it).

That is true.

Originally Posted by harborlady

$30 hr would guarantee all people forced to work for corporations, and abolish small business save for those self employed zero hires.

In short no it wouldn’t. The reason that it wouldn’t is this. Did the inflation in the 1970’s make everyone work for corporations? No. The increase in the minimum wage that I’m talking about is just wage price inflation. No more no less.

Originally Posted by harborlady

I'm vehemently against your myopic quick fix scheme. Your defense of market pricing being inflated is the problem. Market correction= eat your veggies, the twinkies are killing you & your neighborhood.

Hmm, If we printed $7 trillion over 10 years and ran it through China’s economy they mint call this an act of economic warfare.

We need a market correction. The correction that we need is in the ratio of income to debt. We need less debt or we need more income. http://www.bearishnews.com/wp-conten...l-debt-gdp.jpg Do you see where we are at as far a total debt goes? We are headed for severe economic times ahead. The ratio is unsustainable. We are going to crash. Look at the ratio in the 1930’s vs. now. What is going to happen next? “I'm vehemently against your myopic quick fix scheme.”- harborlady . Take a good hard look at the graph. The only way to fix the ratio of total debt to GDP quickly is by inflating GDP by a minimum of 200%. No amount of hard work will ever repay that debt load. None ever.

Originally Posted by harborlady

You only need to remove the boot off labors head.

The problem is bigger than labor can fix.

Originally Posted by harborlady

Federal gov't is being puppet controlled by malevolent forces corrupting the republican party.

The real political situation is this. You have to plutocracy on one side and everyone else divided in half between right and left on the other side. Both parties are nothing but puppets beibg used by malevolent forces. Both of them.

Originally Posted by harborlady

Their party is experiencing a hostile take over, and America itself is experiencing a hostile takeover the longer that republican chair is permitted to be abused.

Both are at it dems and repubs. Both.

Originally Posted by harborlady

A silent war was declared on middle class, upward mobility reserved for those operating in the alternative economy; the board room & wall street collecting tolls coming and going.

Originally Posted by harborlady

Research the full implications of naked short selling. It's literally killing legitimate commerce & favoring organized crime hiding under the cloak of a corporation.
Research the full economic impact of neglecting global trade imbalance.

The printing of $7 trillion worth of new money and running it through the US economy is going to haunt us for a very long time. That is an over 3X on the worlds money reserves. It went into the housing bubble and it went way when the bubble popped but the people that printed the money still think that they bought something of value with a worthless piece of paper. They want their money back and they expect us to work hard to give it back to them. They printed the money to loan to us so why not reprint the money to repay that loan with. I’m talking about just re-inflating the housing prices. If we do that then we have the money they wanted back and it just appeared out of thin air.

Originally Posted by harborlady

Who EXACTLY sponsored that policy?

Don’t look at the public figurehead look behind the seans at who was behind it. Look deep.

Originally Posted by harborlady

The top 10% wealth in USA today have little to no allegiance to their own country.

You said it.

Originally Posted by harborlady

They would just assume abandon citizenship entirely if they had to endure the 'oppression' of personal accountability. Chenney would much prefer to live in Dubai where piracy, slavery and prostitution are embraced with abandon. This is what's passing for leadership in America and it needs a permanent eviction notice.

We need a new political party one that is for the bottom 99% of America. It needs to be run by the little guys and we need to keep the plutocracy out of it. Asking for self reform from the corrupt beats is like asking a tiger not to eat you when it is hungry. We need to do it ourselves.