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

To: John Vosilla who wrote (282679)	10/11/2010 10:13:02 PM
From: neolib	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 306849

That will change when friends sell their house and make money on their transaction, A property a couple of houses away just sold, and it last sold in late 2006, so I was curious how the prices changed, and as I strayed by the tax office today, I checked it out. It sold in 2006 for $240K, and just sold again for $285K. Interestingly, the asking price as first advertised in 2006 was $360K, and this time around it was $340K. So both times it sold at quite a discount to asking, but still had nearly 19% gain over the last 4 years, but the asking price had a decline! This area (eastern OR) didn't have as much of a bubble, and prices have not fallen much either. The clerk told me that this year the county is using a 3% increase in RE prices for taxes.

To: John Vosilla who wrote (282679)	10/12/2010 12:51:59 AM
From: Lazarus	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 306849

some of the greatest times my wife and i had was when we rented. particularly we enjoyed living in a little duplex in Lemon Grove, San Diego. it wasnt long after close of escrow on our first ( and only home ) that we learned about the myth of home ownership. when you own it, all the responsibility for the upkeep rest on YOU. add to that, unless you paid cash for it, you're really just renting money to claim legal title. home ownership isnt all what its cracked-up to be.

To: John Vosilla who wrote (282679)	10/12/2010 1:41:48 PM
From: tejek	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 306849

Former homeowners ponder when to re-enter real estate market By Tomoeh Murakami Tse Special to The Washington Post Sunday, July 25, 2010 New york -- In hindsight, Scott Feldman's decision to sell his first home in late 2006 could have been a case study in a textbook called "How to Time the Real Estate Market." Feldman, who works at a private equity firm, sold his two-bedroom apartment on Manhattan's Upper East Side for $879,000, about 40 percent more than what he paid for it in 2003. But whether Feldman's return to homeownership proves as financially savvy remains to be seen. After weathering the recession in a rental unit, he bought a five-bedroom house in a New Jersey suburb last spring for 30 percent below the original asking price. "We probably overpaid for it -- but we're happy here," Feldman said, adding that he and his wife's decision to buy had less to do with calling a market bottom than settling into a community their two young children, nearing school age, could grow up in. Indeed, while some financially sophisticated professionals who foresaw the housing crisis -- and acted on it -- have re-entered the housing market, others remain renters today. With the fledgling housing-market recovery suddenly deteriorating, these holdouts are scrutinizing the increasingly uncertain economy and doing old-fashioned, shoe-leather research on their local real estate markets as they weigh the timing of their return to homeownership. Of course, no one is expecting the kind of double-digit annual appreciation that created the illusion of homes as red-hot investments and bottomless cash machines. But as other assets recover from the lows of the financial crisis -- the Standard & Poor's 500-stock index is up 65 percent from March 2009, for example -- and home sales and even prices inch up in some markets, more investors sitting on cash are starting to wonder: Do I dare put my money in real estate? Those who have bought say they largely wanted to take advantage of record-low interest rates and a recently expired tax credit for homeowners. They also note that prices had dropped to a point where the emotional benefits of homeownership outweighed potential losses from further price declines. Meanwhile, the holdouts cite a number of reasons for staying put -- cheap rents and still-declining home prices, tight credit and expiration of a popular tax credit to spur home sales, lingering unemployment and rising uncertainty about the economy. "You have to be patient," said Mark Kiesel, global head of the corporate bond portfolio management group at Pimco. Kiesel has been renting since selling his house in 2006 and recently renewed his lease for another 18 months. "You have to stick to the fundamentals. There are more sellers than buyers -- it's that simple." Ben and Julie Feldman sold their 900-square-foot condominium in Dupont Circle in fall 2005. This spring, they went house hunting but concluded that prices were still too high. "Given the level of uncertainty about short- and medium-term economic performance, it really doesn't make sense to jump in unless you have a five-to-10-year horizon," said Ben Feldman, 44, an independent consultant and a renter in Capitol Hill. Home prices have proved volatile. After a steady decline from mid-2006, national average home prices climbed more than 6 percent in mid-2009, but they have dipped since then. Overall, prices are off by about a third from peak levels through March of this year. That follows the huge run-up in prices -- a 90 percent appreciation -- from the beginning of 2000 to their peak in 2006, according to the S&P/Case-Shiller home price index. CONTINUED 1 2 Next > washingtonpost.com

To: John Vosilla who wrote (282679)	10/12/2010 2:19:09 PM
From: tejek	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 306849

'They have lost faith in the notion that housing is a sound investment. That will change when friends sell their house and make money on their transaction, or the landlord raises the rent or the tenant upstairs constantly plays music after 11 PM or they have a baby or two or three.' Same thing happened during the RTC days. Took many years but time heals wounds. The residential depression was in Texas back then. Most every market was turning up again by 1998. Renting isn't all it is cracked up to be either... Maybe at the high end makes sense most of the time.... Renting is definitely not what its cracked up to be. When I moved here, I rented two different places and had to deal with less than wonderful landlords. There are pluses and minuses on either side of the equation.