See: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24580917

“No down payment? No problem
Loophole still allowing risky mortgages by disguising money as a gift”

Finding the bottom is a matter of luck, but finding a good price isn’t.

Rent equivalence is always a good time to buy. Prices may go down a bit more, but you truly can’t lose in the long run.

I find you a bit puzzling. You claim to have made a lot of money in RE, but you don’t seem to understand why you’ve made money. You bought at the right price.

Or maybe you really do understand, and you’re just trying to pump up the market because you want to sell? Well you’ve picked the wrong board for that.

I’m sure glad that the Times can still afford to pay a reporter to wax philosophic on the insane cost of living here, but it’s too bad they couldn’t afford any critical analysis on whether the rising costs are supported by fundamentals.

I believe most who are waiting to buy a home have already formed their own strategies on when they are going buy. There is a lot of info / opinions on that very subject elsewhere on this blog. My personal strategy is that since most socio-economic trends on the west coast of the good old USA tend to originate in SoCal, I am going to wait until after SoCal real estate markets bottom out. I’ll get serious about six months after I see median sales prices stabilize or trending up in SoCal. I may not time my purchase to coincide with the very bottom of the market in the Puget Sound region, but I am betting that I will be close.

Another little factoid that should influence home buying decisions is that I read somewhere that the average time a buyer owns their newly acquired home is seven years. If someone buys now in a declining market, will seven years be enough time to recoup losses? That is a question no-one can answer with absolute certainty.

Yes. And now, after an historically unprecedented run-up in prices, real-estate is nearly twice as expensive as it was just five years ago. Moreover, the price run-up was a direct result of a historically unprecedented credit bubble.

In other words, I think you’ve missed the point: you don’t need to know where the bottom of the valley is, to know that you’re standing on the tippy-top of a mountain.

It’s called “ticker symbol SRS”

ULTRASHORT REAL ESTATE

http://www.opb.org/radio/?mode=highlights

Lanny

Very true. Shorting the REIC been berry berry good to me.

Mikal – The key point here being that you bought before the bubble? I wish you continued luck with your investment endeavers.

The attitude here is not anti-buying, it’s that buying is only a good idea when prices make sense. As your example itself indicates.

Mikal – details please? Interested / curious minds would like to know.

I think we have a bit of a contradiction here. If waiting to buy is a good idea, that means there is money to be lost.

There was money to be made. Past tense.

There also will be money to be made in the future.

But there is no money to be made by buying now.

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Here’s an essay (I helped tutor it) to enjoy on the “con” side that continued unplanned growth in Seattle helps real estate, (it got an A+ 100% by the way):

Unit 5: Our Changing Nation Essay Assignment

The various websites I found for immigration are listed in my Works Cited and one of them is a useful neutral non-partisan discussion website (Messerli, Joe), albeit lacked recent immigration news issues that the mainstream media generally omits anyway. I went to the Numbers USA website (Comparison of Immigration Reform Proposals: SAVE Act (2007) vs. H.R. 4432 (2005)) to get the recent legislation scoop on immigration, as it’s the best source that I know about on recent government law actions in process.

The reliability of all my websites is they are all non-partisan and Numbers USA is non-profit too. The BalancedPolitics.org website (Messerli, Joe) source I used documents both “pros” and “cons” to maintaining/increasing immigration in America , so it’s appearance is trustworthy, but in my opinion, still lacks key details on the “con” side of the issue. The Numbers USA sources are obviously “con” websites only, but since mainstream media and alleged neutral immigration websites generally refuse to publicize recent bi-partisan government actions to limit immigration, I used them as a best/only sole source available. I added more references as I wrote the essay to back up my salient points too.

The differences of opinions on the subject of immigration are documented in some detail from the BalancedPolitics.org website. The “pro” side had much more details and emphasizes increasing diversity of ethnic groups and providing big business plenty of cheap labor, while offering amnesty as a way to eliminate the illegal alien counts. The “con” side description from this “alleged balanced website” of increasing/maintaining immigration did a poor job in my estimation, as they omitted the adherence to America’s Constitutional Immigration Laws by our employers as a key rationale (in my opinion, it is); irrespective, the website focused on drug elimination and wage depressions. It also omitted another key “con” argument, uncontrolled population growth (Messerli, Joe).

The Numbers USA website documents the Secure America with Verification Enforcement (SAVE) Act of 2007 (Comparison of Immigration Reform Proposals: SAVE Act (2007) vs. H.R. 4432 (2005)) hitting the Senate and the House for possible Discharge Petition; which has absolutely no amnesty provision and basically emphasizes border protection and employer enforcement only. It has clear and substantial bi-partisan support (The Campaign to Pass the SAVE Act), as its split between 162 Democrats and Republicans alike on support and petition signatures to date. Congressman Pelosi and Senator Reid are against the bill, but when it comes to immigration overpopulation they don’t listen to approximately 90% of the voters’ desire to trim growth from their neighborhoods’ roads, wetlands, parks and schools, as they apparently want to add to it and support more and more overpopulation amnesty. Then they want green house gas reduced too, with their magic wand.

The mainstream media usually weasel words pro-amnesty polls to say, “Do you support guest workers on farms”, to split the results, but you’ll never find an intelligent Zogby Poll that asks, “Do you support more growth in your neighborhoods”.

My take on immigration is very clear; we need a break from it. We have more important issues impacting our country like hyper-inflation destroying our economy due to uncontrolled growth. The Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) documents 87% of the American environmental destruction overpopulation is legal/illegal immigrants and asserts the other 13% is the illegal anchor babies. The baby boomers are environmental kings and queens, as they kept population in America on a positive environmental decline, until greedy illegal businesses pushed unplanned growth and reversed their positive trends (Cleaning the Air on Immigration and the Environment). Yet we hear on mainstream media the horrors of the baby boomers for being infertile and not overpopulating America like good citizens increasing our carbon footprint, so we need illegal immigrants’ anchor babies to bring us back to utopia again. The brainlessness of this is not educated liberal in my book, as it’s clearly unplanned nonsense and the result in my opinion: the subprime banking mess, $4/gal gas, bridges collapsing and masses of unemployed kids with college degrees heading into this current American recession, etc, etc. It’s clear from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, only about 20% of the growth in jobs requires a degree, yet, about 30% of American youth from age 21-30 have degrees (The 30 Occupations with the Largest Employment Growth, 2006-2016) and (Leaf, George).

In my book, the next President doesn’t win the election, he inherits this hopeless mess that took decades to create and will be serving one term too, especially if he/she doesn’t implement depopulation in immigration ASAP to head off possible stagflation depression. My generation is doomed too, if we don’t depopulate now.

Works Cited

“Cleaning the Air on Immigration and the Environment.” The Dan Stein Report. May 2008.

.

“Comparison of Immigration Reform Proposals: SAVE Act (2007) vs. H.R. 4432 (2005).” Numbers USA.2008.

http://www.numbersusa.com/PDFs/SAVEvHR4437chart.pdf.

Leaf, George, “The US doesn’t need more College Grads.” The Christian Science Monitor. Sep 2006.

.

Messerli, Joe. “Should America Maintain/Increase the Level of Legal Immigration.” BalancedPolitics.org. 2008.

.

“The Campaign to Pass the SAVE Act.” Numbers USA.2008.

.

“The 30 Occupations with the Largest Employment Growth, 2006-2016.” United States Department of Labor Bureau of Labor Statistics. Dec 2007.

.

As for screaming…I guess it depends on how shocked you are by crooked bankers.

This one was a collaboration between TAL and NPR news, so there’s a really good mix of hard analysis and human interest….

Appreciate them while you can. Unconditional love from most. You’re not going to find it anywhere else.

Predator / prey that is the market place, right? Caveat emptor!

How about prey becomes predator.
Consumers band together as a group to fight off predatory lenders.

Then how does the alligator fit in?

Alright, how about: The baby bull represents the consumer and the lions and alligator represent lenders and a real estate agent.

How about the young and inexperienced are vunerable to killer hazards when following herd behavior.

Okay. I am stopping now. There are a lot smarter bubbleheads than me that visit this blog who can continue with better analogies, if they are so inclined.

How about “predatory” lenders are on the run.

Sorry – I know it’s lame.

Let me guess on your analogy – the “bulls” win in the long run?

This goes out to my Mom who is 90 years young and to my daughter who is a wonderful mother of two at 23.

Without Mom’s we wouldn’t need houses ;)

Great video. Real estate analogies anyone?

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=90327686

Remember “anyone with a pulse can get a loan”? Well, it seems being alive was optional; 23 dead people in Ohio got loans!!!!

“Located in the highly desired Eastgate neighborhood.” Eastgate? Highly-desired???

This video has been seen over 30 million times at youtube.

Pretty amazing; watch the whole thing.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LU8DDYz68kM

Last Sale: April 23, 2007 for $365k
Asking Price: $446,950

This just drives me nuts. Blatant greed is driving this, nothing else. There is no value here. "golly"ed flippers.

http://www.redfin.com/WA/Bellevue/4044-156-Ave-SE-98006/home/233966

Last Sale: April 23, 2007 for $365k
Asking Price: $446,950

The part of the discription I like the most:

“Fully remodeled & updated home, even the gutters and insulation are new! New cabinets throughout with slab granite in kitchen and both bathrooms, hardwood floors, new paint and windows.”

So what are the chances this guy is even going to get $365k for it…?