Comments on: Stop the Presses! Some Maybe Kinda Sorta Pretty Good News from the Housing Market

By: rjs

rjs — Tue, 05 Jun 2012 21:03:32 +0000

during the boom, most people forgot that houses are a depreciable asset, just like cars, albeit with a longer lifespan…

the lowest long term interest rates in history are now supporting home prices…on a 30 year fixed, monthly payments on $100 K are half what they were a few years ago…there continues to be a lot of blog-talk about a house-price bottom, but it’s still anyone’s guess if that bottom will be this year or not; we may stabilize at these levels, or there may be another leg down as the foreclosure inventory backlog is cleared…but we should eventually get into a natural long term pattern where changes in annual house payments on the same property come close to but do not exceed annual changes in disposable personal income per capita; anything beyond that is unsustainable…

By: wkj

wkj — Tue, 05 Jun 2012 17:31:14 +0000

Why this cheerleading for the residential real estate market? If the price of almost any consumer good stays flat or goes down, e.g., gas, cars, clothing, furniture, refrigerators, etc., people are justifiably happy.

We had a massive real estate price bubble and it ended badly. What makes you think we will handle the next one any better?

By: Chris G

Chris G — Tue, 05 Jun 2012 16:33:44 +0000

I’ve been tracking days on market vs sale price (and list price) in our area (Boston suburbs) for the past year. Qualitatively, a plot of the data suggests that days on the market is inversely proportional to sale price. (!) That’s overstating things a little but there’s an obvious downward trend with increasing price. I’d be happy to show the plot if there’s any interest.