that's how you make your tires jet fokkin' black, right?

You do know that there are RE agents that post here, don't you?

I can't speak for myself, but the other guys are great guys, fyi.

Now go home, get a better sleep and come back tomorrow, nicer. :cool:

Buying a house has been a desperate desire for my wife since we came from Hong Kong to SoCal 4 years ago. I've been holding off, watching, reading and listening. I have had no confidence in buying here. Well, as all good things come to pass, this issue of buying a house has been so divisive amongst us that it, among other things, has led to a separation between my wife and I.

She is buying her own apartment and going her own way. Me, I'm licking my sores and trying to keep my head up as I look for an apartment to rent.

But to the topic...just for fun I rang around a few RE agents looking at what I might buy (apartment) for around the $450,000 mark with full 100% finance. No problem. I was overcome with the offers, based on goodness knows what. I have a good credit rating +700's but no assests and a meager elementary teacher wage. They are still throwing money at people!

I still think another 12 months of declining home prices and then the market will be interesting to enter. Welcome to Caliclosure!

Sorry Rob, the many bad RE agents give guys like you a bad name. I have dealt with 4 different agents over the last few years, and not a single one has been honest or forthcoming with my wife and I. Typically I know more about the area where I'm looking than they do (comps, etc), and they all try to sell us on things we're not interested in. If I could find an honest RE agent that would give us honest, candid advice, and actually LISTEN to what we are looking for, they would have our business for life.

Very very true...my wife and I were just talking about this the other day, it is amazing how financially illiterate most people are. I've always wondered why finance 101 is not a requirement in high school, it makes no sense at all. Kids don't even know the basics, all they know is spend, spend, spend....

Man, that sucks. I have mucho pressure from the wife to buy, too. But I am trying my best to hold off her off, as I know it's a huge mistake to buy right now in SoCal.

Hang in there and stick to your guns...

At the top of the big hill on the rollercoaster, starting the big drop, raise your hands and start screaming.:D

Sounds like fun except for the folks who got on at the top (say within the last 4-5 years). Their necks are strapped to the top of the ride (via mortgage). The coaster is going down, but their necks aren't. Something has to give. Bernanke and CO, are at the bottom of the hill trying to hold the coaster in place, but who has ever heard of pushing a coaster up a hill with a rope???

I just checked the chart for Missouri. We didn't get up to the inflation line till 2004. Just not as exciting around here. There are also few choice;s of renting a nice home. Most rentals are cheap houses or apartments. You can still generally buy a house for about the same as a rent payment.

I don't think I have ever paid more than what 2 years salary would buy. And I have always had new homes built.

Same thing in KS. We are slow but steady, about 6%/year in my part of town. Sweat equity is about the only way you make much on real estate around here.

In Seattle, RE prices were never considered inflated. We have a wonderful quality of life here, rapid growth and more water than land. We have not had much in the way of price "corrections" here, but rather a market "hesitation." My personal expectation is that once there is a tiny bit of evidence that the "hesitation" might be finished, I think the vultures are going to attack the market. They are lining up on the tree branches as we speak.

Yeah, no bubble in Seattle.

Looks like prices in Seattle are poised to rocket higher any day now. Seattle is different. (In the Bizzaro World).

http://www.housingbubblebust.com/OFH.../NorthWest.PNG

Wayne, there is a problem with these charts - they are plotted on a linear rather than a log scale. Plotted on a linear scale, any quantity that grows by a certain % per year will appear to grow geometrically - which it does, but that is not necessarily a problem, or an indication that the quantity should revert toward a linear trend. The slope of a curve growing at a constant rate will increase and increase, and the rate of growth will eventually appear alarming if it is plotted on a linear scale. You can see the same thing if you plot the value of a dollar invested at 5% per year.

The straight line you postulate as the trend in fact represents lower and lower rates of growth over time. Growing from a value of 500 to 600, for example, represents 20% growth, while growing from 100 to 200 represents 100% growth. So growing from 100 to 200 in, say, 5 years is a much faster rate of growth than growing from 500 to 600 over the same period.

I am not saying there has not been a housing bubble, but if you are going to buy when values return to historical norms, you should probably either look at log-plots, or plot the trend itself to reflect some constant growth %.

That's why you should never put kryptonite near your brain, folks.

The housing market is very different in various locations for a variety of reasons. The relative price range (low, mid, upper) of the homes comes into play also.

In this area the prices of the mid to upper level homes have went down far less than the national average. And new home prices are virtually unchanged except in certain rare instances.

Consider this graph for the NYC area. (NYC itself is the 2nd line from the top) You will note that the appreciation of housing has been running above inflation for 30 years, regardless of several recessions, stock market crashes and several radically different mayorial administrations. Even back in the early 80's when the city was still a crappy place to live, values were above trend.

If I had to bet, I'd say while housing prices in NYC wil surely drop, there is not chance of them returning to follow an inflationary trend.

Why?

1. Speculation in NYC most likely is not as high as in CA. I have said this before in the real estate thread. CA seems to be ground zero for speculation. The gains therefore are more honest in a sense.

2. Therere is continuous demand from overseas for real estate in NY.

3. Lingering old rent controlled housing keeps the incentive for new construction low and therefore prices for uncontrolled housing is high.

Somehow though, the booming skyline doesn't seem to reflect this and I doubt this is as much a factor as #2.

4. Geographically NYC is bounded in a way that LA is not. You can only build up in Manhattan, and that gets quite pricey.

Finally:

5. Inflation is not necessarily a good metric. Most investments outperform inflation. You should not put your money in those that don't.
http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1204951222.jpg

If that's the case, then you are saying just about everyone outside of NY should not buy/invest in a house. Because you will be hard pressed to find any other areas in the US where houses have outperformed inflation, in any significant manner, over time over the last 50 years. The vast majority of areas (probably 99%) in the US have not.

Still not time to buy in Los Angeles again ('Charming starter home' on a 5,000 sq ft. lot for $1.2 million)

http://losangeles.craigslist.org/wst/rfs/599250348.html

From an investment sense: YES, you could interpolate that from the statement and be correct.

However, neither will the purchase of a car outperform inflation, or food. Yet people need both. Sometimes you don't even need them, but it just makes you happy to have them. Not all returns are monetary, after all.

A strictly tangential observation: I'm of the opinion that most people buy way more housing than they need. Huge bedrooms, 3 bathrooms, a sitting room, a foyer and oodles of closet space that does nothing but collect things that should have been put on Ebay long ago. In other words: Space that they could easily do without and never miss. But if it makes you happy....

1. To state the obvious: She is not "your" real estate agent if she is looking to sell you property; she is working for those trying to sell real estate -- you are seen as a "likely customer."

2. With the recent actions by the Federal Reserve -- which are likely to continue -- inflation will be heading up to meet the previous rise in real estate prices, rather than the real estate prices dropping to match inflation.