This is one of my favorite gems, dating from November 2007, just a few months after home prices in the Seattle area began their long decline. Robert Mak asked the question: “Where’s the bottom?”
In order to find the answer, he has a host of industry insiders give their marketing pitches. Unfortunately the original video seems to have been taken off the King5 site, but you can still read the synopsis I posted at the time. Here are a few of my favorite nuggets:
Suzanne Britsch, with New Home Trends, on why it’s pointless to try to wait for the bottom (and why you should obviously jump in and buy a house right now):
The problem is, is when it flips, it goes in one day! You know… I mean… So you never know when the bottom is.
One day… four years… You know, it’s all the same, right?
Lennox Scott (CEO of John L. Scott) on why the Fortune forecast calling for a 19.5% drop in prices over five years absolutely would not be happening:
That’s not the projections that we’re seeing. We’re in one of the best markets in the nation here in the Northwest. We have positive job growth, we have low interest rates… And we just do not see that taking place.
Oh, wait. Prices have dropped over 25% in just over three years. It turns out that not looking at realistic projections doesn’t magically make them not take place. Go figure.
Mak: Should I be scared though, of jumping in, and then seeing the price continue to slide, even once I’m in?
Scott: You’re not going to see the prices come off that much. They may come off ever so slightly off the peak.
Just ever so slightly.