<<re:"my area of country". It says: 'Veteran
real estate agents are having trouble explaining the
steep decline in pre-owned home sales".
May I suggest: 'JOBS, JOBS, JOBS'.
or:'PAY, PAY, PAY'.
or:general wage-earners can't keep up with your games. >>
John Chen:
Could be that the agents quoted are not even seeing a decline in pre-owned home sales, so of course they can't explain it.
It's summer, and sales will be slower where I live, no matter what. Higher-end homes will always sell less quickly than lower-end homes, because the rich want to build their own from scratch. Wait until Fall to draw conclusions about anything in my area----summer sucks for real estate activity here. It's hot, humid, and homes look like toast right now--what sold quickly several months ago will sit for a while, no matter what.
And I personally don't have any "games"---whatever you meant by that statement.
The only game I am giving some thought to playing is to travel out west to Loudoun County where the WCOM/AOL disaster might be having an effect, and see whether I can pick up a townhouse or two as rental properties.
But if you read the stories appearing over the past week in the Wash Post carefully, houses are still selling there within weeks and the townhomes there are now more expensive than the McMansions some people bought four years ago.
I notice the Post reported that a real estate agent moved his family into a McMansion recently vacated by a laid-off worker who got no job offers here but got several offers in Atlanta. That agent probably saw a good buy, and he must have sold his own former McMansion fairly quickly in order to make the move.
Watch out, Atlanta, we're sending our cast-off workers to you, so expect a housing boom there, maybe?
I also read in newspapers and heard on TV a number of stories over the weekend, quoting people who said they were fed up with stocks and were going to concentrate on real estate investments. Not to mention a FOX news channel poll showed something like 71+ percent of people polled said real estate was a better long-term investment than the stock market--only something like 17 percent thought stocks were better.
Have never seen real estate seen in this light before, and it does worry me. A bubble of sorts (mainly unrealistic expectations as to price) might be in early formation stages right now, but it didn't exist before, in my opinion.) |
