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Strategies & Market Trends : The Residential Real Estate Crash Index -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: jjs_ynot who wrote (587)	8/29/2001 9:36:27 PM
From: Tradelite	Read Replies (4) \| Respond to of 306849

Undeveloped parcels of land in FFX County....right....who owns them? When are the owners going to turn loose of them? Builders probably already have options on them. I have undeveloped (but already subdivided and long-since spoken for) pieces of land near my home near Chain Bridge in McLean. But none of that land in Clifton, Fairfax Station or McLean is going to accommodate the population growth around here. Also, with prices being what they are in this area, a decreasing number of mortgage loans are so-called conforming or VA/FHA loans that Fannie or Freddie or GNMA cares about. And yes, prices declined horribly in the early 1990s. But as I posted on this board earlier, that situation followed an extreme period of over-building and speculation----this is not so much the case today. I knew the market was imploding on itself when my list of buyers started dropping out after they saw what they would have to pay to trade up to bigger homes. One by one, they said, "geez is this all I can get for $600K? I think I'll just add a room or two to my present home and stay put." These days, buyers don't think: Oh goody, I'll sell my present home, make a killing on it, buy a bigger home, sell that one too and make a killing. That's part of what killed the market in the early 1990s. It was cocktail party conversation at that time to brag about how much money you had just made on the house you just sold and how much you've already made on the new one. THAT was a real estate bubble. The world was full of "discretionary" buyers (and builders) who just wanted to speculate. My sister is a real estate attorney who spent the 1990s resolving mechanics liens, foreclosures and all sorts of other ugliness that resulted from the bubble. Today, you don't have a real estate bubble...you have a limited supply of housing for a growing supply of people of home-buying age. Period. If jobs and incomes get hurt by the economy, prices will come down. The number of people needing housing will not decline.