I picked a bad decade to buy a house .....

The way that story reads, the only people this really affects in any big way are realtors. If you're in the market to buy a house, isn't this good for you? I mean, if the housing bubble has burst, doesn't that essentially guarantee a buyer's market? Pardon me if I don't wring hands over this. According to the percentages, it's only half as bad as it was in 1982. These things are cyclical. I bought a house 18 months ago. Unless I win the lottery, it'll be a while before I buy another one.

 

He's exactly right.

Especially in our area, the overbuilding is insane, since it's one of the few affordable places in SoCal to buy a house. We were lucky to sell our 1,800-sq foot home (that we were in nearly 14 years, BTW), so we could upgrade to a new home that's nearly twice as big further west.

One of the builders in our area was saying that they're not even building homes for the locals, since they can't sell their homes. They're building for the people down below (LA and the San Fernando Valley), who are selling their homes for ridiculous amounts and migrating north for more home.

Of course, if the assclowns on the planning commission weren't issuing permits to anyone with a pulse in many of these towns, the market would stablize and prices wouldn't drop as much.

 

I'm the biggest fuckin' hero in Idaho, Texas and Oklahoma!

 

If you're buying a house, it's fucking awesome.

But if you OWN a house that drops $40K in value, all while property taxes spike, it sucks to holy hell.

It double sucks if you got suckered into an ARM (Thank goodness I wasn't one.)

 

Thank you.

 

After 20 years of seeking then owning homes in greater Boston, I have the formula figured out.
If you're thinking about thinking about buying, you find yourself in the middle of an historic boom in housing prices.
If you're thinking about thinking about selling, the market is or will shortly be collapsing in an historic bust.
Personal highlight. We put a home on the market in the summer of 1990. I got up early for the papers the next morning to see how our realtor had placed our classified ads.
Didn't matter. The headline on the front page "Iraq invades Kuwait!"
We finally sold it one year later.

 

There you go. George Bush out to screw liberals to profit oil barrons again.

 

I'm experienced enough to have seen a few of these boom and bust housing cycles. This one is a concern on two fronts: The number of crazy, hybrid loans and the affordability in certain markets. Yes, housing prices go up, in general, over time. But in certain high-price areas, it seems doubtful that there will be another big bump in prices without a corresponding jolt in wages. When starter houses are 500k and above, that's a lot of coin needed to pay for an unrisky mortgage.

 

Our next-door neighbors have had their house on the market for three months now. They aren't getting many nibbles. Their Realtor tells them it's because builders are throwing up McMansions by the dozens on the outskirts of town.

Those are easy to sell, while 1,800 sq. foot houses built in the 1940s and 50s in historic neighborhoods are appeal to a much smaller buying base.

 

Says Mr. Jeopardy, who can put his winnings into a new home or rebuilding the existing one...or enjoy his Rice-a-roni -- one of the two..

 

But what about all the conservatives who have posted here that the all-time high in home ownership is a sure sign of the Bush administration's economic prowess? Or is the housing news attributable to the president only when the news is good?

No, Bush isn't to blame -- they can't even sell the outskirt McMasions in my metro area, and yet they are still building more. Many of the newest homes have been long vacant because the builders can't unload them, even when they offer incentives that border on the obscene.

And every homeowner is paying for it -- there are some homes in my area that have fallen (at least) $20,000 in value in the last two years.