housing makt still in the pits
 

We still have a long way to go here folks

Home prices pummel again in the 1st qtr , more forclosures

The usual suspects - florida + nevada are involved

Where is the bottom?

the market was WAY overpriced to start with. there are pockets that are starting to rebound.

wait till the unemployment foreclosures start to hit.

The good news? In many major areas, average house prices are now at about 3-4 times income.

More good news? with rates below five percent, investors can buy and rent out places and make a profit again.

Real estate is local and its a shame people pay so much attention to averages.

Thats true and that was exasperated by the fact that wages had been relatively stagnant over the same period of time that housing was booming.

great just what we need. more slumlords making $$ off the gov't by taking section 8.:wf :wf :wf

Forget about averages. Averages are ajar because high end properties have decreased in value far less than med-low end real estate both commercial and residential, regardless of location.

This is simply not true. Real Estate is local. a 1,000,000 dollar property in loudon county virginia 3 years ago is now 650,000k. That same 1,000,000 dollar property in downtown DC (30 minutes away and same MSA) is worth 1,100,000. Location, location, location.

Rates of decline are certainly going to vary depending on locality and obviously some localities are actually increasing despite what the rest of the country is doing.

properties that were 150- 200K 3 yrs ago in each area. How are they today?

The bottom? The credit card market still hasn't even crashed yet.

Depends on the area. Again, if you are talking downtown DC, it was rare to find a place that cheap so the ones that were there have at very least maintained value. In Loudon VA? The percentage of drop has mirrored that of the higher end homes. In PW and loudon counties and PG county across the bridge, the 500-700 range has just gotten throttled. From what ive seen, that range has been the hardest hit across the board. Still, it depends on the area.

I had it beat into me not to think of a house
as an investment way back in the Savings and Loan
crisis.
A house is a place to live.

Much better than an apartment in
that you will get something back if
you can pay for it.

People taking other loans against houses
that were way overvalued have learned
a very hard lesson.

Have they? If they get a mortgage bailout, I'm afraid they won't. Sometimes the only thing that forces people to live within their means is when they no longer have any means. I had the same thing beat into me.

Lots of houses here foreclosed on.
Some very nice prices available to be
picked up on at the expensive of people
living in places they could not afford.

A lot of these foreclosures are on 2nd homes that people don't want to dip into their savings or investments to save, or are waiting to see if our benevolent Govt. will throw them a bone. Of course some are primary homes of people who lost their jobs, and I have no problem with helping them out.

There is nothing wrong with renting.

i rented for 26 yrs. until Very recently. the reason we bought, prices Finally fell to where we could afford something we Wanted, in a neighborhood we Wanted to live and we're paying about what we were paying per month in rent.
we got this place, $20k Below asking price, because it had been on the market 2 yrs starting a 3rd. AND, it was Almost $100k cheaper than 4-5 yrs ago.:zz:

This is how it is supposed to work.
Congrats on your new home.
I hope this type of thing happens in the
rest of the country.

It is a nice feeling that the money you
pay every month is going to something
you own.

The houses I am looking at are primary residences
of mostly older people in a coastal city.
I would guess their 401K did not meet requirements
for longer ownership given the current climate.
This is kinda sad imo.

The high end houses in the same place are 2nd homes.
These will probably not be sold quickly. They are not
worth near as much as the banks think right now.
Guess they are holding out till things get better.

A very small survey of a big problem.
As mentioned earlier each area in the US
has its own little story.

IMO, most homes here are still over priced. we just got luck and found the right person.
2 problems here, many people are VERY upside with their mortgages and the state and county tax rate. about $250 a month of our mortgage goes to pay the taxes (this house is only 6-7 yrs old). one development we looked at, taxes would have been $375-400 per month and the neighborhood was not as nice as this one.:zz:

The more houses that are unoccupied and not paying taxes, the more the taxes will rise to make up for it, especially school taxes. I am afraid that if this energy bill goes through it will be a double whammy. Schools use electricity too. School taxes jumped big time where I live due to oil costs and will probably skyrocket with another increase in energy costs. That coupled with a decreased tax base could be murder for me. Sucks when you're careful to buy within your limits and still have enough $ left to enjoy life then oil prices, gas prices, and taxes threaten to take it all away. I believe home assessments were inflated so localities could get more in property taxes while everything was going great guns. That may keep them inflated for a while.

Houses are a depreciating asset. Always have been. They are a place to live, not an investment.

appeantly the last 2 presidents before Obama both hailed record home ownership in the country , the problem , is there were too many people in too many houses that they couldn't afford to live in over the life of the mortgage

This isnt true over the long haul. Over the course of time, real estate is at very least an excellent hedge against inflation.

A piece of real estate bought in New York City 10,20, 0r 30 years ago is worth more today than it was then regardless of the fact that we are in a mini depression.

Real estate is local. Real estate is local. real estate is local.

Bzzz. You aren't considering all the money you put into a house over the long term. Of course nominally it might go up. Which means nothing unless the buying power of the nominal increase is above the nominal increase of all other things needed to live.

And you aren't considering all the money you can write off in taxes and interest paid on your mortgage. You can't write off any rent money.

Wrong, even considering mortgage deductions it doesn't change the principal. And yes you can use your rent amount if the % is a certain amount.

If there is a mortgage on the property and the loan was set up with escrow impounds, the mortgage holder is paying the taxes and adding it to the borrower's escrow account as an escrow advancement. If/when the property is foreclosed upon, that figure is added in to the principle due. If there are no mortgage impounds on the property the city/municipality can file a tax lien. The city/municipality will eventually get their money, but the forclosure mess does put a cog in the stream of payments they receive.

Real estate taxes are stacked in favor of the city. If the assessed value goes down, then the mil rate (the figure they use to calculate the real estate taxes due) goes up so that they "meet their goal". If the assessed value goes up, the city can crow about dropping the mil rate, while of course, still raking in the same amount of cash and spending it foolishly.

The cost of education is another thing entirely. If you really break down the school budget there is a nauseating amount paid for administration (just like in health care). While increasing energy costs do affect the overall cost, it is mainly the upwardly spiraling cost of special education that is bulging the education budget. As an example of the administrative B.S. that my taxes pay for, children will now get a report on their B.M.I. (body mass index) on their report cards - WTF? My taxes are paying to pinch fat kids' arms and then tell their fat parents that their kids are fat?!!! Turns out, cutting physical education and sitting in front of the TV with XBox 360 don't burn many calories. Grrrrr.

Back to work to pay for the nanny state.....

OH MY GOD!

Somebody understands...

The no child left behind stuff requires so many extra aides
for special ed kids. Our district has to pay for so much more staff, etc...
in order to meet the mandated needs that were unfunded. (The funds
come directly from the taxpayers in the school area in this state)

I sit in a room for one whole period (47 minutes) waiting for kids to come in
that need one on one. Sometimes no one shows up. I cannot
leave to go help somewhere else, like double team in a Physics class
for that time, where one teacher is trying to do a lab with 30 kids.
Leaving is against the unfunded mandate. Our school could potentially
lose other money if I go help. I was picked for this job because I can make
the kids understand. But I could help so many more. It is a misuse of
manpower.

And the body fat study. They frggn pulled kids out of my class to
make them walk around a track and pinch them. We have stuff to do.
I lost valuable instructional time. Those are PHYSICS minutes, do I get
my PHYSICS minutes back with those kids? And yes I could have told
you which kids are fat and which are not. But I guess the fed. government
wants exact numbers. I want my time back that I lost with those kids.

You touched a raw nerve.

they had bmi checks here unless you sent in a paper refusing it-which i did. i thought it was silly.

Your rent can go up and will go up with inflation.

Your mortgage payment will stay the same for thirty years on money borrowed at 4.5%.

If a mortgage payment and rent payment were equal twenty years ago for the same property in manhattan, buying it would have been a better investment.

Saying that real estate is ALWAYS a depreciating asset is simply not true. It says here that you agree.

For the record, i am not the economist for the national association for realtors and I very much agree that in many cases it is much better to rent. Of course the longer one plans to live in a property, the better the idea it is to buy...especially with rates at 4.5%.

sorry about the raw nerve. it chaps my azz whenever I read about this stuff. thought about teaching, am sure i couldn't take the administrative b.s.

don't mean to hijack the thread, just got going on my most recent rant.

I will add this:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...l?hpid=topnews

What is not mentioned... We get kids that have disabilities so
severe that they cannot learn. They have a very small amount
of brain function. They just drool in wheelchairs. I feel sorry for
them and for their parents but they need to be in a hospital.

We dont have the proper facilities, so their parents use this to
their advantage. No hospital costs, they are in school. AT the school
I used to teach in the Science people shared a floor with the Spec.
Ed. They moved most of us out because the labs had plumbing so
they could refurbish and turn into bathrooms to wash up the kids.
The bottom floor of that school was in essence a ward for the severely disabled.
Bedpans, diapers, the works.

Then you get all these people saying look how much we pay per
kid. Its ridiculous.They dont realize the avg. kid is not getting the avg. amount.
It is wildly distributed with the most money going to the
"problem" kids. People also dont realize that the many state and fed. govs.
basically ask public schools to act as a surrogate family. It has changed
drastically in my 20+ years. If I had to start all over again, I would have
never switched from research to teaching. The only thing that continues to
save me is I teach a tough elective (Physics) in a suburban school.
I have seen what goes on with new teachers in bad urban schools.
They throw them to the wolves and they are out... most within 3 years.
Revolving door babysitting.
But the babies are basically young adults.
They do more than cry.