Housing prices in your area

[Jim in Anchorage]

Just wondered how the RE market was doing outside my turf.

[Magox]

I'm in Miami. The glut of unsold condos is sickening and the worst part about it is there are still a number of cranes out there accompanied by unfinished buildings. It's not just an issue of supply but the restrictions that lenders have for condos.

 

If you are a buyer not only do you need a substantially higher down payment, but there are many more hoops that you have to go through in order to buy that condo as opposed to buying a home. For instance, over 75% of every owner of a condo in that building has to be current on their condo association payments. If that number isn't met, then the down payment has to be a lot higher than it already is.

[BuffaloBill]

HHere in Dallas we are flat to down. My wife and I are trying to sell right now. We are fortunate in the sense that we do not have to do this and if we do we will have a good set-up on the buy side. Realtor is saying that prices remain essentially flat but inventory is building up so at some point there will be downward pressure. People also seem to be having difficulty getting financing.

[/dev/null]

Down in Hampton Roads. Not plummeting like other places, but prices have gone down noticeably.

 

A coworker of mine does the rental property thing and his realtor buddy told him that in the next couple of months the next wave of foreclosures will start hitting the market. Real estate investors will be able to up properties on the cheap

[drinkTHEkoolaid]

Buffalo never had a real estate boom, in fact we really never had any type of boom for as long as i've been alive. Our prices are low, taxes are very high and value of homes is steadily increasing in hte 1-3% range yearly.

 

A middle of the road home here is in the $120,000 ish range (depending on location) but taxes will probably hit you for $4000 (more or less) a year so that will skew your mortgage payment significantly higher than the value of your home.

[KD in CA]

Flat to moving up a bit. The NYC area economy seems to have stablized, and things in CT haven't been as bad as elsewhere. I was able to sell my mom's house for about 96% of what they had paid in 2004.

 

Of course, RE prices here are so high to begin with, some correction was probably appropriate anyway. Hard to image there will be any kind of pop any time soon.

 

The good news here is that due to prices and lack of space, there were not endless numbers of cookie-cutter houses built during the boom like you see in places like Vegas, FL, etc. that are now empty and creating a seriou issue for the marketing.

 

In fact, I read a really interesting article recently in The Atlantic about that issue.

[Chef Jim]

In the SF Bay area they're up/down/sideways. It's such a diverse area we've seen it all. Where they're mostly going up are the high end places in the city.

[LeviF]

People don't sell around here. They keep their fists around their 200 year-old houses past death.

[ExiledInIllinois]

Down... But the market in the south Chicagoland area was kinda like BFLO, the housing was always down and affordable... Now it is super affordable... I may be thinking about buy with cash. Prices are like 1970's prices... You can pick up decent properties for well under 100 grand. Take a look, you will really be surprised as I was.

 

Buffalo never had a real estate boom, in fact we really never had any type of boom for as long as i've been alive. Our prices are low, taxes are very high and value of homes is steadily increasing in hte 1-3% range yearly.

 

A middle of the road home here is in the $120,000 ish range (depending on location) but taxes will probably hit you for $4000 (more or less) a year so that will skew your mortgage payment significantly higher than the value of your home.

 

 

What's the problem in NYS?... My house in Illilnois (Will county, not Cook) was bought for about 150k in 1995... And taxes now are almost 6 grand. I don't know why people cry about taxes. Other places are "just as bad" and have economies that work and if not outright thrive. In the whole tax debate, it seems that it would be killing those areas too like it supposedly does in WNY.

[RkFast]

They are down on Long Island....but I still cant afford **** becuase any decent house on a plot of land bigger than Inez Sainz' ass has taxes pushing 12K per year.

[ExiledInIllinois]

They are down on Long Island....but I still cant afford **** becuase any decent house on a plot of land bigger than Inez Sainz' ass has taxes pushing 12K per year.

 

If I could move my house a 1/2 mile into Cook County (Chicago's county)... I would save about 1800 bucks on property taxes. Cook County, I am pretty sure is the only county in Illinois that taxes different. But, yes... You pay more in other taxes like sales... Which is almost 10%... Like when you buy a car.

[birdog1960]

moderately down in Southern Virginia....mmcmansions are way down- i recently saw a house built for $800k about 5 years ago listed for 500. midlevel homes ($150-250K) are down only a liitle. amazingly building costs are still high despite the drop. higher end homes (but not highest) are $175-250 square foot to build but much less to buy used especially if they're huge--the mcmansion is dead.

[IDBillzFan]

It really comes down to where you live in California. My zip code is hanging tough with slight increases, but adjacent zip codes are not. Some areas, like the Inland Empire, are still getting killed.

[Magox]

Nationally speaking, the prices had stabilized over the past year, but that trend is about to change and WE WILL start seeing prices heading back down again.

[Pine Barrens Mafia]

We bought at the bottom of the previous dip. If we'd have bought at the height of the market, our house would have cost about 30k more than it did. So wh HAD seen a precipitous decline in house prices, but now it seems to have stabilized.

[Magox]

http://noir.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601010&sid=aPjDFWbLAdd8

 

Sept. 15 (Bloomberg) -- The slide in U.S. home prices may have another three years to go as sellers add as many as 12 million more properties to the market.

 

Shadow inventory -- the supply of homes in default or foreclosure that may be offered for sale -- is preventing prices from bottoming after a 28 percent plunge from 2006, according to analysts from Moody’s Analytics Inc., Fannie Mae, Morgan Stanley and Barclays Plc. Those properties are in addition to houses that are vacant or that may soon be put on the market by owners.

 

“Whether it’s the sidelined, shadow or current inventory, the issue is there’s more supply than demand,” said Oliver Chang, a U.S. housing strategist with Morgan Stanley in San Francisco. “Once you reach a bottom, it will take three or four years for prices to begin to rise 1 or 2 percent a year.”

[Jim in Anchorage]

http://noir.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601010&sid=aPjDFWbLAdd8

That sounds rather depressing.

[Chef Jim]

It really comes down to where you live in California. My zip code is hanging tough with slight increases, but adjacent zip codes are not. Some areas, like the Inland Empire, are still getting killed.

 

Are they still coming with the Meth lab in the garage? Because that needs to be taken into consideration.

[Magox]

That sounds rather depressing.

Which is why the Federal Reserve won't be doing any sort of meaningful type of fiscal tightening for the foreseeable future. Well, that and our unemployment situation.

 

I've talked about their future conundrum, which is what will happen when the economy starts to move along at a little bit better of a pace than what we see now? If oil prices are already at $75 a barrel with the REAL unemployment rate at around 17%, what will happen to the price of oil when a few million more people enter the work force?

 

Think about it, if a few million people are driving cars to work, this most likely means that economic activity is picking up, which means more trucks are out on the road burning diesel. Then of course this means that economies such as CHina and India who are already experiencing above 8% year over year demand for oil will pick up even more so because their exports will be stronger then what it is today because of a signficant uptick in U.S/Europe demand for products.

 

The problem is that even with a few million more people working, the unemployment rate will still be around 8%, which is still VERY HIGH and the housing market will still be very weak at 8% unemployment, so the Federal Reserve will be very reluctant to raise rates significantly in a weak housing market and very high unemployment environment.

 

You raise rates significantly, then you risk derailing the recovery in both housing and the employment situation, meanwhile by the time this happens OIL will probably be around $100-$125 a barrel which of course is a MAJOR drag on the world economy.

 

Even worse yet, grains prices are already soaring, so you would most likely see these prices go much higher, and this poses a huge PROBLEM for Developing nations such as China and India where food makes up a larger portion of their inflation component than over here.

 

It's going to be a real cluster!@#$.

[Chump Change]

Magox nailed it. I live in coastal San Diego and home prices are flat to rising slightly. However all you have to do is look just a bit inland to see the shadow inventory sitting idle. My neighbor brought me to a nice home in his sisted neighborhood that has been slated to go up for auction. We got in (the doors weren't locked) and looked around. Beautiful place! He was interested in getting a good deal. The problem is that this house has been slated and rescheduled for auction for almost a year now. That is just one small example.

 

The Inland Empire is a wasteland and isn't coming back any time soon. From what I understand, there are neighborhoods with 30-40% vacancy and no sense of urgency from the banks to move them.

 

One of the major issue standing in the way of a recovery is the total destruction of credit ratings for all those american's who have foreclosed on a home. Lending standards today are so tough that most of those people are out of the market for years to come. Because of the foreclosure, they will have to rebuild their credit ratings IOT qualify for any loan. Then there's the issue of a down paymnet, and oh, yea...having a job. This cycle is going to last awhile. There simply is no quick fix here.