Housing Anecdotes
After telling someone (in the finance industry) that I was a bear on the housing market this weekend, I was told that I should "get serious and start building equity". I didn't know whether to laugh or punch him in the mouth over the idea that because I hadn't bought yet that I wasn't serious. So I kept it to myself and let the conversation move on to other topics. It's just not worth the hassle discussing it sometimes.
Anyone else have similar experiences recently?
Anyone else have similar experiences recently?
Comments
Aka, housing to me is like abortion, gun owners rights, the environment etc.
They usually don't even bring it up for fear of my wrath.
The coworker that does know about the blog found out unintentionally when I sent him our year-in-review letter (which turned out to be fairly amusing, IMHO). He and his wife are about 27 years old, proud homeowners of a tiny little house on a tiny little plot of land... in Sultan. We work in Redmond, and his wife works in Bellevue.
Evidently he was under the strange notion that when you get married you must buy a house. He's currently living in a 1200 sq foot place in LB for only $1400/mo (rent control); normally that would be maybe 800+ more?
He was thinking of cashing in his 401K for a 10% downpayment on a $450K starter condo but I think I talked him out of it. He said to me "Yeah, I'd been wondering why you guys have been renting all this time..."
If it's difficult for people to understand there is a correction going on in California then you know how hard it must be here in Seattle where we're just getting underway.
I'm sure that if I *did* have co-workers I'd probably drive them crazy with all the econ talk.
I'll be talking with some of my clients tomorrow and Thursday... I'll try to remember to ask them their opinion of RE in their state - get some more anecdotes.
I hear you there, some of my friends last week were trying to pressure me into buying some vacation property in the North Cascades for way too much money. One of them owns a few properties in the area and when I mentioned I think prices are going to be going down, I received a bunch of "how can you say that!" or "you've been saying that for years, it's never going to happen"
As a result, I shut up and changed the subject. There's no changing the minds of those who have already drank the Kool-aid.
It's happened to my too often & I've learn to keep away from this topic. So far, all my friends and co-worked have been right. The homes they bought (on the eastisde) abt 3 yrs ago has gone up by over 50%. Some of them looking at buying a second home on the eastside, as an investment -- even though they can barely afford their first home using a traditional mortgage.