What's housing doing where you are?

In My Humble Opinion
21

Our housing market (Boston area) has slowed to a trickle. I can count on two hands houses in my neighborhood that’ve been on the market for more than 6 months – a few up to a year, perhaps more.

Our old next-door neighbors had to lower their asking price 4 times before they sold. I think they lost more than 50K on it.

There’s a steady stream of foreclosures too, which is unusual in my area. One in particular was a “flipped” house in which the new owners had only lived there for a year.

Right now the our other next-door neighbors have their house up for sale. It’s been on the market since January/February. No takers. Ditto for my boss and a handful of coworkers, all of whom are planning to head toward NC/GA/FL because they simply cannot afford to continue living here.

Me? My mom’s house has been paid off for ages. I’d like to sell it because the cost to maintain it is through the roof, but considering what’s been going on, I’m going to hold off for now.

22

I’m curious about this decision. Do you think it’s likely to appreciate in value?

My impression is that we’re past the peak, but that prices still have a long way to fall. Sure, 6 months ago was the time to sell, but now’s still better than 6 months from now.

23

This was the lead story in the Palm Beach (Fla.) Post earlier this week. Sales of existing homes are down 39 percent in July, marking the seventh straight month of decrease. The median sales price for an existing home is down to $405,500 – a whopping 0.3 percent. In June 2000, the median price for a used home was $143,500. Now that I’m actually looking to buy a home, the properties are way out of my price range.

I’ve heard that the market is slowing in Central Florida, too, which means that my greedy uncle won’t see a profit on the monstrosity he’s building over on the Gulf Coast. He paid $326,000 for it, hoping to get about $450,000 from a sale. Now he’ll be lucky if he breaks even.

24

In the Tucson area things are starting to stall, but only just. I saw on the news a while ago that housing costs in Tucson are the 4th highest in the nation relative to average income, which is not high at all.

Even a few months ago, houses were being sold within hours of being put on the market for ridiculous prices. There were a lot of condo conversions, too, with depressing news stories about people being put out of their apartments when the building converted. Now houses will just sit and sit, and conversion is slowing, but the prices haven’t come down. It seems to me that a lot of people are trying to sell before the market cools, and are refusing to come down in price until they get what they want.

I can only hope this is the beginning of a major downturn in prices. Tucson employers consistently defend paying low wages because the cost of living here is (was) so low. Give me either a raise or affordable housing, dammit!

25

Calgary Contrarian

GOt my fingers crossed for a market readjustment soon. :smiley:

26

I honestly don’t know. I don’t know enough about real estate to even wager a guess.

I’ve heard two different scenarios:

  1. If I hang onto it and slowly do some remodeling, the market will return to the upswing by the time I’m finished.

or

  1. If I cut my losses and sell now, chances are I won’t be able to afford anything similar in this area, given that I probably wouldn’t get what the house is appraised at.

So what am I doing? Nothing right now, as I first have to clean 40+ years’ of Mom’s clutter out of here before I do anything else :eek:

I’ve heard a lot of people saying the same thing. My boss, in fact, plans to take his house off the market and stay put for the very same reason.

27

When we bought our house 6 years ago, it was one of maybe 5 houses for sale in an established, well zoned, convient neighborhood of about 900 homes. Houses sold well within a month. I have two houses in front of me and one next to me for sale right now. Within 1 block of my house there are at least 10 houses for sale and more going up every day. The three next to me are exceptions, two are very long established residents and one was purchased by a flipper who allowed the former owner to live there. Big Mistake, she’s a drunk with too many cats. All three houses have been for sale in excess of 6 months, I know 2 of them have dropped in price and still no bites. The drunkards house had the carpet ripped out, new appliances, typical flipper process. They bought the house way below market value which overjoyed the neighborhood (houses go for ~$300k, she sold for $170) they are asking $340K for it. NFW are they going to get that.

We have a ton of equity in our home, thankfully, and even if we sold in todays market, we would make a profit, but nowhere near what we could have a year ago. There are so many flippers in this town, it has been practically impossible to find a fixer-upper. You can’t buy a condo for less than $175K. The job market here is saturated with low paying customer service/call center type jobs. My best friend is a realtor and she says it’s virtually impossible to find a non-crack house for less than $250k.

To top it off, insurance rates have gone through the roof. My mortgage increased $300 a month to cover insurance, not to mention our new property tax cut is raising our rates. So a mortgage I was originally paying $800 a month for is now costing me $1150 a month with no variation in my interest rate. The actual mortgage portion of my mortgage is $350, all the rest is homeowners insurance, flood insurance and property taxes.

The joys of living in Florida in a post-Katrina world.

I heard a guy say they should ban insurance companies from being able to sell car insurance here unless they also sell homeowners insurance. These companies are fleecing us or dropping us like flies. How a company like AllState is allowed to sell car insurance in this state while dropping all it’s homeowners policies is beyond me. Our governor has just enacted a task force to find a solution. The homeowners insurance hikes are driving people out of there homes. I’ve heard of rates that have gone up 300% with no claims.

I can afford $800 easily, which is why I bought my house, however, if homeowners insurance keeps raising, coughing up $2000 will definitely force me to sell for whatever I could get for my house. This housing market isn’t the only thing tossing folks into foreclosure, in Florida, homeowners insurance is doing just as much.

28

Well crap! my landlord just came in and told me my rent was going up next month. He wants $350/month for Spetember! Didn’t he get the news that the rental market was glutted and he should be lowering prices? :mad:

29

In NW NJ, it’s definitely slowing (I think). Signs have been up on houses on my commute for in excess of 6 months, when this time last year they would have had people throwing money at them from the sidewalk. I’ve been in the area for 11 years and have never seen “reduced” stickers on “For Sale” signs, but you see them with increasing frequency.

VCNJ~

30

I work in New Jersey real estate, and it’s definitely slowing down. Houses are on the market longer, and the prices are being reduced. It happens.

31

Are you in the city or county?

32

After Hurricane Katrina, so many homes were demolished or unlivable that there was a severe housing shortage. Now, almost a year later, that’s beginning to change, with new housing going up and damaged homes being repaired. My family lives in a two-bedroom about 3 blocks from the beach for $600/month. Mind you, you can’t actually go into the water because of all the debris out there. But the city’s supposed to be cleaning the beaches soon, some of the casinos are up and running, and it looks like next year’s tourist season is tentatively on.

33

With the two foreclosures I know of, the houses were later sold for less than what was owed to the bank, and the bank made no effort to collect any more money from the debtors. It would have been a waste of time and effort, and I guess the bank realized that. I don’t know what happened to the credit ratings.

In my little town, houses sell quickly, I think because our property taxes are so much lower than nearby towns. But in the nearby towns, the market is very slow. I’ve seen For Sale signs on some houses for years. Nice houses, maybe priced too high, but I think the slowness is because everybody’s leaving.

34

Here in Edmonton, house prices are still going nuts. Our house has more than doubled in value in the past five years.

But this can’t continue. There’s no reason for it to continue. House pricing is determined by one thing only - supply and demand. The reason apartments in New York are worth $1,000,000 is because A) there’s a big demand to live in New York, and B) There is no more room to grow the city. The truly expensive housing markets are all in places where the supply of new houses is limited by geography, zoning restrictions, or stupid government policy like rent controls. San Fransisco, Vancouver, New York, etc.

This does not bode well for continued high prices in Edmonton or Calgary. Both are sitting on open prairie with lots of room to grow. The current restriction in supply is not due to permanent factors, but simply because the infrastructure can not keep up with demand. There’s not enough labor, raw materials, and the city can’t build out new roads, sewers, and other infrastructure bits fast enough to keep up with demand. So house inventories are low, demand is high due to an exploding economy, and that’s driving up house prices.

But that will change. Once demand slows a bit, supply will start to catch up. Eventually, an equilibrium will be reached, and the price of houses will return to sane levels.

Whether the new ‘rational’ levels are much lower than they are now, or whether prices will just plateau and stop increasing for a decade while market conditions catch up to house prices is not clear at this point. But there’s no fundamental reason why a house in Calgary or Edmonton should ever be anywhere near the value of a house in New York or San Fransisco. But we’re currently seeing 2000 sq foot homes selling for $500K and up. The average house price in Edmonton has gone from $110,000 just a few years ago to something like $270,000. Crazy.

35

FROM LINK
Prices continue to rise for single-family homes in Montgomery and Prince George’s counties.

Montgomery County in da house (so to speak). I think this quote is misleading.

Condos in Montgomery County are being hit hard -there was an Article in the Post about it a Sunday or two ago. They are simply not selling. It is a very tough Market.

Townhomes anecdotally, seem to follow Trunk’s observation:* can’t say popped, but I can say that houses AREN’T SELLING. They’re just sitting there. And who’s going to buy into that? At some point, people are going to have to start asking less.* To sum it up: on Townhomes I do not think Sellers Expectations have caught up with the Buyers perceptions - not saying either is more or less realistic - because I am not sure - but that is what I think is happening.

Single Family homes seem (again anecdotally) to be more or less making asking price, they seem to take longer on the market and not have multiple contracts that we have seen in the immediate past. There haven’t been price drops – yet. Here I would say Buyers perception is caution - but that a Price adjustment isn’t in the offing.

Sources: Condos more the Post … Townhomes/Houses from Post too but work friend’s wife is a Real Estate speculator and is worried but taken no real hits yet. Also observation of a Townhouse in nearby development with a prominent end-unitthat has been for sale since early summer.

36

but that a Price adjustment isn’t in the offing.

A better/more clear way to make my meaning: a Price adjustment hasn’t happened yet

37

You count funny. :slight_smile:

38

Heh. Good one. I meant “the relationship between supply and demand”.

39

Greater Seattle area.

We put our home on the market in February and it took about 4 months to sell. Other homes in our town were selling briskly in about the same price range. In the last couple of months, though, many many homes have come on the market at prices about 20 - 30% higher. They’re just sitting there, too. Nothing has sold in my neighborhood since our house and yet prices are going up rather than down. Odd.

40

ABC News has an article on the housing glut.