There have been some warnings that home buyers who came late to the party could be in trouble.  According to David Lereah, Chief Economist for the National Association of Realtors: Buyers in most of the country who plan to stay in their home for a normal period of homeownership can pretty well bank on those historic averages, but people who purchased last year with the intent of flipping are likely to get burned. Gerri Willis of CNN Open House reports: Prices have risen 60 percent in the last five years, so if you’ve owned your home for much of that…
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Minorities Pay More Since the Great Depression of the 1930s, both Democratic Party and Republican administrations have promoted homeownership. Federal programs have used agencies and the GSEs to deliver programs and subsidies to make housing more affordable, meaning that it would cost less to buy a home. Since the dawn of the Millenium, however, this word affordable has acquired the stench of something three weeks dead and very, very, evil. Now "affordable" means "low teaser rate", the narrow end of the alligator’s snout, ready to trap the unwary family into a mortgage that will be their ruin. Perhaps worse, since…
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I love Zillow- I use it a lot. (And no, they don’t pay me to say that.) A number of people have told me, "But I checked Zillow and they said my house was worth $XXX- there’s no way it’s worth $XXX!"  If you are only looking at the "Zestimate" –Zillow’s estimate of your home value–you are missing a lot of the value of Zillow. Here’s an example:

Hat tip to Ben’s commenter Captain Credit [1] for starting me off on this one. The hint led me to a Bloomberg article [2] detailing how two senior Fed officials had just given detailed and complementary speeches on inflation.

You gotta love this quote from today’s New York Times (Hat tip to L for this one!): “In visiting our local associations and state associations, we were hearing our members saying, ‘…we are getting beat up out there,’ ” said Thomas M. Stevens, who is president of the trade group that represents 1.3 million real estate agents and owns a real estate brokerage firm in the Washington area. “We think we need to tell them that the stars are aligned right now and the conditions are ideal for buyers,” he added.

The pundits are declaring that the housing market has hit a "trough" or a "bottom."  I myself prefer the phrase "slippery slope." Here is Housingdoom’s unofficial sneak peak at the October numbers: FOR ALL MLS Active:  47,100Under Contract:  6,659SOLD (10/01/06)  5,600 (This number should come down as agents change status when deals fall out at close of escrow), Single Family Homes:  4,693 TOTAL EXPIRED LISTINGS SINCE 10/01/06:  3,433 21,387 OF THE ACTIVE LISTINGS ARE VACANT OR  45.4%

John and I are dizzy dealing with all the spin in the MSM this week.  There is a concerted effort at the moment by the REIC, to downplay the current pain in the housing market. The pundits have been out in force, laying it on with a shovel.  We much appreciate any links, comments, and insights that don’t attack our sense of equalibrium.

It's time for true confessions here.  Although I spend my time writing about the housing market, I have felt for some time that I really should be writing lyrics for country songs.  I've never made the attempt though- I think because I've been lacking the proper inspiration. Last night I found my inspiration.  David Lereah, chief economist for the National Association of Realtors (NAR) wrote an article "Turnaround Hinges on Pricing" for Realtor magazine.  It was when I read this quote from him I suddenly felt inspired:   Once property prices come down to more suitable levels, households and investors…
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Yesterday, just for Halloween, blogger Charles Hugh Smith told us a scary story [1] about the similarities between the Japanese real estate bubble and the unfolding of the US housing market to now. Of particular interest is his first graph, showing Japanese land prices between 1980 and last year. This repeats figure 17 of the famous MSM article "The New Road to Serfdom", which was the cover story of "Harper’s Magazine for May 2006". Harper’s had some fun with the image, making it look like Mount Fuji. This mountain image is powerful, and can help us see how some less…
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