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

To: fatty who wrote (4723)	8/27/2002 2:18:24 PM
From: Tradelite	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 306849

<<We also know that cities and towns around the country also making more buildable lands available. There isn't shortage problem here. >> You're kidding, right? Now I know why you feel the way you do--you live outside a major U.S. metropolitan area. Am I guessing correctly? Otherwise, you just took the biggest single reason for rising home prices in the U.S. and threw it out the window as being insigificant. Ask any builders today why they are charging more to build homes today than five years ago, and their answer will be primarily the scarcity of land and higher expense associated with acquiring it and developing it.

To: fatty who wrote (4723)	8/27/2002 2:56:18 PM
From: Paul Senior	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 306849

I very often wonder who can afford to buy the "expensive" houses I see. How do they do it? The owners look so young to me. When I see in my local newspaper what some of the loans cost, it's clearer to me. A "30-year interest-only mortgage at 5.5% on a $500,000 home would be set at $2,292 a month, compared with a fixed loan at $2,839." For a youngish couple, both working decent jobs, with their future ahead of them (raises, promotions, seniority, etc.), and with a few years' savings behind them, or a previous home, or with parents' helping... house prices may not be cheap, but they are affordable. For these haves anyway. (vs. the have-nots)