Granted, it’s still funny – it just doesn’t translate well.

Well Chad, you had me fooled too! I mean, The Tim uses a real picture (although IMO he looks like some guy lurking around a playground in that picture). Joe Consumer–well, I’m worried about him–those beady eyes creep me out . . .

I had no idea that there was a British version of The Office. Geez, with that and Ugly Betty (another imported comedy), it doesn’t speak very well for the creativity of our country. 300 million people here in the U.S. and we have to get our comedy sitcoms from other countries?

*shock!*

And here I thought that was a real picture of you, Chad! I feel so shocked and betrayed.

</sarcasm>

Some of those people (the 50% to 70%) are exactly the ones driving this bubble.

Imagine this, everyone in metronaturalia earns 50,000. If no one is willing to spend more than 30% of their income on housing, prices will fluctuate with interest rates, but only rise as incomes grow. That’s more or less what we’ve seen in the past. It is Robert Schiller’s view (he wrote Irrational Exuberence) that there is essentially NO growth trend in real prices over the long haul. If we all decided to spend 50% of our income in metronaturalia on housing, we would bid up the prices of housing, but no one would be better off.

As to the percentage of income spent on housing not “even factoring into the equation”, I don’t know how you seriously assert that. We can speculate (heh) endlessly on WHY people are doing it, but they are clearly doing it. If lenders were restricting people to the old 20% down and 30 fixed formula, we wouldn’t be in this mess because all the Trump wanna be’s would be selling beanie babies to each other, as they’d be unable to buy the houses they buying today.

>ROFL!!!!

ahahhahaha. Sorry, I amuse easily.
—

Thanks, S. Your David Brent avatar gives me a larf every time I see it (and your posts ain’t chopped liver, either).

- Mark-in-Tokyo
- Remembers the days of “Would the last person leaving Seattle please turn out the lights?”

-Bill Fleckenstein, August 2006

I will pile-on with the indictment of those that have had, not only the luxury of the past equity bubble to draw from, but the impending implosion from the other bubbly metro areas of the country. If you live in Seattle, and can’t see this bubble for what it is, you deserve everything the looming bust will deliver.

ROFL!!!!

ahahhahaha. Sorry, I amuse easily.

Sorry, that makes absolutely no sense at all. Many are already spending a -much- higher proportion of their income on housing (50-70%? vs 20-30%?). That doesn’t even factor into the equation. Home prices are up -simply- due to mass-mysterial from over liquidity.

There is nothing that will “keep prices up” at the present moment. Sure, in 2020 you should expect to pay more for your home than you would today (assuming we haven’t gone back to a more simpler way of life…)

>I’ll admit it is remotely possible.

Elvis may still be alive as well… it is remotely possible.

“Paradigm shifts” are usually followed by: Brother, can you paradigm?

In my opinion the only thing that can keep prices up, over the long haul, is if people have decided to spend a higher proportion of their incomes on housing. If they haven’t prices will regress to the mean, but if people are willing to spend more than they used to, for whatever reason, that would be a paradigm shift. Sure, HELOC buyers of watercraft, suv’s and other bling will get burned, but prices could stay up.

I for one think they won’t stay at these income/price levels, but I’ll admit it is remotely possible.

…this was caused by a CREDIT BUBBLE
I agree that expanded credit is probably the major driver in the price run-up. The question is whether the new credit models will explode under the test of time. We may be looking at a permanent paradigm shift, depressing as that is. The essential problem, I believe, is that real wages are backsliding (fact), deepening the class rift in myriad ways. The declining median prosperity makes cheap money essential to continue extracting money from the American masses, who have a negative savings rate.

Don’t waste your breath on this crap. It just makes this blog look more like a freaking echo chamber.

Many of the posts are relevant and comments insightful, but to jump all over an article in a completely irrelevant publication is silly.

Seattle?

I gotta wonder why we’re a distant third behind Silicon Valley and Boston in the number of software startups, if we’re the at the epicenter?

10 cities where housing prices will slump the most

Seattle is special!!!!

Keep buying, people, no bubble here, market going up. . .

Seattle is a home to numerous heavy metal and grunge bands.

Duuude, Grunge is so dead… get with the program, somebody needs to send this joker a ‘Death Cab for Cutie’ or ‘Modest Mouse’ album for cryin’ out loud…

Well, I’m sure if I was herding sheep or tending the wheat fields of ancient Sumeria, the leather bag of gold I kept under my straw mattress would probably exhibit a long-term trend that moves “strongly upward”, but regardless of the fact that gold has always been the fundemental currency of civilization, IT DOES NOT MAKE IT INPENETRABLE TO BUBBLE MARKETS!!!

Look at the early 80’s, Gold over $800 an ounce? That wasn’t a bubble market? Come on….

I’m starting to think the fundementals of economics and the Real Estate industrial complex are mutually exclusive.