Do you know anyone that wants to sell their home but is waiting for a better market?
- Yes. (78%, 94 Votes)
- No. (22%, 26 Votes)
Total Voters: 120
This poll was active 09.05.2010 through 09.11.2010.
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Sorry this posted so late. I guess I’m having too much fun at PAX!
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My landlord. She is an agent who has fully consumed the Larry Yun Kool-aid and is certain things will recover. This is great for me, as I will probably be able to continue to lease this gem for years to come. 2.5 years and counting….
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RE: wreckingbull @ 2 –
Maybe she’s waiting for that light switch to go on after Labor Day :) I still can’t get that quote out of my mind.
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My previous landlord, my current landlord, my next door neighbor to the south, the owner two doors down to the north, the neighbor five doors to the south, my best friend, several co-workers. I don’t keep a large circle of friends, so I am amazed at how many people have their lives in a state of partial-paralysis because of their homes.
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RE: ARDELL @ 3 –
I think maybe the switch goes off after Labor Day and everyone is locked in. The chance to sell was this summer. The public’s level of awareness regarding the economy as a whole is growing. I think home sales will fall even further, to almost nothing, as buyers pull back and wait. Uncertainty about the future puts a real damper on big purchase decisions.
Prediction time: Bottom of the housing market, 2014. The stock market will take a hit this fall, but the big one comes in fall 2011. Lots of big swings up and down in stocks, but the trend will be down until 2014. After that, flat for some time, much like the 1960′s. If you are waiting for any market to come back it won’t be soon.
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The NYT says it’s time to let housing crash. Efforts to continue supporting prices will fail in the long run. Housing will eventually have to deal with another 25-30% drop when interest rates return to historical norms. Freddie/Fanny and the support they offer add another 10% or so that will also go away once the government finally decides it can’t afford to continue subsidizing both the GSAs and the tax break for interest deductions.
Reality check: the government is broke, spending almost a third more than it takes in with no end in sight. The cure will involve major changes, not just tinkering around the edges of the problem. When the choices come down to supporting housing prices, retirement accounts, medical care, and defense I don’t think housing will make the cut to be in the top three.
““They are deeply worried and don’t really know what to do.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/06/business/economy/06housing.html?_r=1
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Tough luck story – I have boomer age relatives in California. They bought land in Idaho with a plan to sell their CA home, build in Idaho and retire there.
Well, they bought the land and then the market crashed. They moved into a condo in Idaho to wait for the market to rebound. Three years ago.
Last month they decided that they could no longer afford the condo and their CA mortgage. But they are under water in CA and won’t/can’t sell out of it.
New plan: sell the dream property in Idaho. Use the proceeds to wait the market out some more, then sell their CA house when it moves into the black.
They are destroying their retirement with this false hope.
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RE: Scotsman @ 6 – This is a really good point that gets mentioned periodically. One of the reasons I have not yet purchased a home is that I have no idea what idiotic move the government will make next. Will I buy a home, then a few months later all my neighbors get a free taxpayer-funded cramdown? How will that affect my investment? A little certainty would go a long way, even if that certainty is that we have a long, slow crawl out of this mess.
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RE: Hugh Dominic @ 7 – You have just described the prototypical scenario in Sandpoint, Bend, Ashland, Redding, and many other locales. Areas that used to be fueled by California equity are melting down and a pretty good pace now.
I was in N Idaho a few months ago and the difference between now and a few years ago is striking.
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By Scotsman @ 6:
No, they don’t. They are reporting on what some economists are saying. You can find some economist to say just about anything. That’s the nature of the study of economics.
Just as an “in comparison,” I was watching an NPR piece (or whatever the TV version is called), and they had a law professor on who analyzed the Citizens United case by saying that the legislation preventing corporate donations was decades of politicians saying that they would be corrupted by corporate money. Really a silly constitutional analysis, but NPR found someone who was willing to make it.
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RE: Kary L. Krismer @ 10
I guess you don’t read the NYT much. When it comes to politics (the arena in which economic policy plays out) they pretty much only print what they want see. Nobody has called or even suggested the NYT is “fair and balanced.” David Brooks, their one “right wing columnist” is still to the left of many Seattlites, a joke in the circles he’s supposed to represent. So you can bet if an idea gets into print in the NYT it is only because they support it.
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By Scotsman @ 5:
It takes a long time for people to lose memory of easy money. It happens in a gradual fashion. It’s laughable how, just a few months ago, so many economists were predicting a V-shaped recovery and millions of people jumped on the bandwagon.
It seems there are two main categories of people: those who gain knowledge purely from cloning others’ thoughts, and those who think for themselves. People in the former group will always be misled by their peers whom remain forever clueless when it comes to understanding the future. People in the latter group also consume others’ thoughts, but these thoughts undergo a digestive process that fully breaks them down into their simplest components, incorporates the good, and excretes the waste. The newly forged components are then incorporated into new models and functions in an effort to better understand the world.
There is an extreme danger in our education system in that it spits out more parrots than it does people who think for themselves. I fear our predominant political and religious models will never allow this to change; thus, we’ll forever be a society primarily composed of mindless witch burners. (Think about it, if you were a government or a church, which population would you prefer to teach?)
If I were to wake up in the middle ages, a witness to the persecution of witches, and be provided the choice of becoming a mindless witch burner or a mindful witch, I have to say I would choose to become a witch. (I certainly would not be looking forward to that whole burning at the stake thing though.)
But how could I become a mindful witch as opposed to becoming a mindless witch burner? Well, becoming a witch burner is rather easy, you just parrot the thoughts and actions of those around you without undergoing a single mindful deviation. But to become a mindful witch, one must fend off traveling down this path of least resistance. This requires developing the ability to think independently of those around you. Interestingly, looking back on history, the ratio of witch burners to witches was rather lopsided. This tells me, if you choose to become a witch in our current day and age, you should not expect to have a lot of friends and receive a lot of external validation and reward.
So what’s it going to be folks, think independently of those around you, or jump on the bandwagon? Truthfully, we’ve all made our choice a long time ago, and we are forever locked into this decision.
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Good poll idea. That is really another type of shadow inventory.. the people holding out as long as they can before selling. Then again, anyone who bought in the last 5 years has a very difficult time selling even if they are willing to.
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RE: Hugh Dominic @ 7 –
Under-water on Mortgage and Retirement Aged Too
Good gosh, fire their financial planner….anyone past 55 years old and still has a mortgage to pay off, planned it all wrong in my book. If you don’t get out of debt at even 5% fixed mortgages paid out of your net pay, don’t expect the -5% stock market or 1% MM YTD to give your 401K a boost, so you can retire.
Its too late for that older CA couple in my book, they should have gotten out of mortgage debt long before this bubble popped.
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RE: Scotsman @ 11 –
Have You Read the Book “Waiting for Godot” Scotsman?
Its about two tramps in a ditch waiting for Godot to return….they’re sure he’ll come back and even when they become destitute and get beat up by hoodlums, they never lose their useless faith. Of course Godot never comes.
Seattle home owners waiting for a price rebound remind me of those two Samuel Beckett tramps, “Waiting for Godot”.
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Thanks for the NYT link, that was a good article. Lots of good comments too in that one too. Ever since the July sales drop the media has repeated the message “home prices are going down” over and over. Will that affect actual data?
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My friends either walked away form their mortgage or have come to terms with fact they are stuck in their house for 10 plus years. And my friends that are stuck have stated that if they need to move they will be walking away as well.
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I have a friend who moved to Phoenix a year ago but did not want to sell her house. She used to be in real estate. She explained to me that she knows if she waits a couple more years and rents the house out she will be able to sell it for more. She wants to make up for what she lost on the Stock Market.
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Currently have a Offer on a Almost new house in Meridian/Boise Idaho… in the Upper end of Town. 2490 Feet 4 Bedroom house 3 Garage that is in New Condition- they Spent a lot of extra money on Upgrades, Vinyl- Fencing/Large overhanging shade and lots of Concrete Yarding to make it low Maintenance, Water Softner built in High end Appliances on a 1/2 acre Lot that sold for 260,000. back in 2007 with all the upgrades added on they easily spent extra 20thousand+
My offer is at 165,000.– its a the moment being considered.. with 20-25% downpayment with a Mortgage payment in the 900 range depending on how much I decide to put down… I have a renter setup with a childhood friend to cover the Mortgage with a small margin of profit. Im going to rent it for below market rates to help my friend out… I see it as a Win-Win..
I Believe things are going to get worse Especially in Boise Idaho, however I believe that i’m making a smart long term move with myself planning to move to Boise in about 10 years. The apartments are almost renting as the same price as the Houses– average rents for not as good part of Meridian/Boise are about $900-950- for 1,500 foot house and 1,100 is almost the Normal rent price for a house.. apartments are asking about 8-900 rent.
I wanted to buy one of the Best/Better houses in what I would consider to be the Bellevue area of Boise…
anyways I seen Several People Commenting on Idaho above– I just see it as a Great Opportunity when the Cost of Ownership is on Par with the Cost Of Renting… Especially when you can get a High Quality New or Newer home.
Boise is Amazing the Growth that was fueled the amount of Homes Built, when you go to middle class neighborhoods you see Quite a Lot of houses with notices of people that had there houses taken by the Bank… A Mean A LOT… I Watched on on street 2 moving vans in the Middle Class District, however that could also mean they were renters moving to another place, since so many people got in over there heads purchasing Rentals at a Higher Market… imagine buying a Rental and having to compete with people purchasing homes and renting those houses out on a 40-% discount and in turn renting those houses out of even lower prices, its a Dog Eat Dog World Out there~!
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I’m going to dig around in the sofa cushions to come up with the 3% down on this GEM, then rent it out for $500 to a couple of old farts trying to get by on social security. When everything turns to sh&t I’ll have a place- in the middle of nowhere- to run to:
http://www.johnlscott.com/propertydetail.aspx?IS=1&ListingID=300661509
Or how about this? Losh, what do you say? Think about it- “CONDO CONVERSION!”
http://www.johnlscott.com/propertydetail.aspx?IS=1&ListingID=300489229
Or this:
http://www.johnlscott.com/propertydetail.aspx?IS=1&ListingID=300711596
And for when the foreign hordes descend:
http://www.johnlscott.com/propertydetail.aspx?IS=1&ListingID=300661225
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