Topic: Housing Market Inventory At Extreme Lows [Dec 2012] (Read 3521 times)

Good post trogdor, I agree, at least to the extent of assuming an uncorrupted environment.

"I've never understood why it's greed to want to keep money you've earned but not greed to want to take somebody else's money.”

Certainly, many of the elite class have become quite adapt at stealing monies from other people, but that doesn't make the entire upper class greedy.  Many of them are also very legitimate workers and key players in the companies or roles they occupy.

Is anyone considering impending hyper-inflation as a potential cause for home prices increasing?  They've been printing quite a lot of money lately...

The problem is that all of the wealthy elite that you reference control everything else in various ways. They'll get their money, regardless, so a crash serves to shake up the system and then the poor and middle class end up paying for it. It's complete lunacy to think redistribution of wealth is anything but a power grab that will utterly kill all production long term.

Or put another way, the top 10% are the ones doing all the hard work that the 90% don't want to do. You'll rise to your level of problem solving, so if your skill set is, "I know how to earn enough money so I can pay for my car and mortgage", that's what you'll get paid. If you can help solve the problems of a large corporation, that's what you'll get paid to do. And sitting around playing the blame game like the 95% are wont to do isn't going to help their situation. Instead, they should be reading quality books (e.g. The Slight Edge, Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, etc.), seeking to improve their education, exercising, eating healthier foods, paying off debt, etc. -- but while those things are all possible for anyone to do, they're even easier not to do. Not doing them today won't hurt you, but long-term you'll end up in the pits.

(Note: The general content of this post is inspired by reading The Slight Edge. I highly recommend the book; people need to stop looking for quick solutions and focus on improving Number One. Read 10 pages of such a book each dead -- e.g. instead of surfing Internet forums -- and by the end of the year you've read 3650 pages of quality self-improvement material. There's no way you could do that for a year and not come out a better person!)

this is a fantastic article to read about California housing:  http://www.doctorhousingbubble.com/home-equity-net-worth-figures-us-housing-debt-home-equity-near-record-lows/

from the article, look at this:



what it shows is that 90% of the American ppl own only 6% of the financial assets in this country and specifically only 19% of stocks and mutual funds.  the vast majority of QE has gone to reinflate those assets and have done much less for housing (the average American's source of wealth).  

remember what i said about how a stock mkt crash is something only Wall St and the elite should fear?  well, this proves that i'm right, and if anything, a stock mkt "crash/cleansing/deflation" will only level the playing field.  it is not something to be feared, but in fact, encouraged.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2012-12-10/real-estate-bottom-or-head-fake

According to Zillow, housing prices in Eugene have risen from their low of $191k average in February 2012 to $197k as of October 2012.  Not much of an increase, but it is an increase.  The peak was $250k in August 2006.

I bought my condo for 160 i could probably sell it for 180 (only 1.5 year later), and now the astronomical prices for homes on the Island of Montreal is forcing more people to look in my area, prices are sure to BOOM some more!

housing always goes up Up UP, no bubble here

CITI'S MATT KING PRESENTS: 'The Most Depressing Slide I've Ever Created'

http://www.businessinsider.com/matt-kings-most-depressing-slide-ever-2012-12

yes, the drop in housing values should've forced a mark to market event thus blowing a huge hole in most banks balance sheets on the asset side thus forcing bankruptcy and clearing out the bad lenders.  but NO, Ben has to step in a buy all those bad assets, bring them into the Fed under the guarantee of the US taxpayer who is responsible for paying those things off if and when they default, paying in terms of the minimal debasement of the USD by taking the balance from $800B to $2.8T, and the continuation of the same institutional corruption that should've been cleared out by BK's.  thus we get the wipeout of the middle class with the elite getting their incomes shoved ever higher and the lower classes seeing their incomes get shoved ever lower.   an elongated hourglass configuration.  

Banks are holding those homes because selling them will result in a loss on their books.

If the bank has a loan on a house valued at 300k and the owner forecloses, their books show that they now have a 300k asset.

With the drop in the market that house may now be valued at 100k or less.

If banks dropped all of their foreclosure homes, their earnings reports would show huge losses and scare off investors making their stocks plunge. So keeping the properties at their inflated value is to their advantage even if the house crumbles into a heap of wood.

It is a flaw of only appraising a home's value at the time of purchase. If there were yearly appraisals these homes would be dumped left and right.

http://www.mortgagenewsdaily.com/12072012_mortgage_interest_deduction.asp

Why is there a paypal donation button but no bitcoin donation button on that site?

here are some very practical reasons to wait at least until after the 1st of the year to find out what's gonna happen:  http://ml-implode.com/viewnews/2012-12-05_FiscalCliffandTaxChangesaThreattotheHousingMarket.html

the latest from Ramsay:  http://www.acting-man.com/?p=20839

yes, but look at those 2 articles i posted from Acting Man.  its a huge gamble for them and most likely not gonna pay off.

student loan growth is in a bursting bubble.  i think its a particular predatory form of lending by banks in that their objective is to enslave the younger generation into a lifetime of debt servitude.  i will never let this happen to my sons and all you young guys should be fighting like hell against this.

Those graphs show mortgage debt growth going down and student loan debt growth skyrocketing.  So less people are borrowing to buy a house...which means possibly...institutions are buying with cash?

https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.1382461

if you were a bank and were faced with going thru the normal foreclosure process and losing money in a declining market vs. keeping those homes on your books and getting bailed out by the Fed at mark to model prices (inflated) which would you do?  who cares about the homes anymore?  they've essentially been bought by the rest of us via the debasement of our currency.

that's really not true at all.  those who speculated on homes during the run up who had ARM's have been "bailed out" essentially by the rest of us as Ben has lowered interest rates over the last 4 yr.  their monthly payments have actually decreased allowing many to stay in their homes.  

look at municipalities that were duped into buying ARS's which were essentially bets that interest rates would rise.  these were sold by Wall St as a hedge against the muni bonds which municipalities sold.  Jefferson County and many others have lost millions if not billions on these bets.  a conspiracy theorist would say that Wall St sellers of these instruments knew that Ben would be there with the free money to bail them out via further suppression of rates as the bubble popped.  they have made fortunes at the expense of the municipalities.

Fed is printing money to buy those foreclosed homes (or indirectly, mortgage backed securites), and they keep it as a reserve

These homes will worth a little if all goes to the market. But, like FED could destroy money as well, when the economy is fully recovered, they could sell these homes at a later time to cool down the economy (just like they sell the government bonds, home or government bonds, which has higher credit?),

Not really sure why banks keeping foreclosures off the market would be considered a "conspiracy theory."

I spent a long, long time looking at short sales and foreclosures before settling a few months ago. Ask any realtor why the Hell banks are letting $300k+ homes suffer severe water damage, house abuse by gangs making foreclosures a hangout, and other effects of nobody giving a damn. In one house I looked at, it would've been worth well over $200k if the bank had bothered to maintain the house since it was foreclosed on over two years ago. Instead, it went into disrepair and was listed at a price of $25k, about the value of the land (the water damage was so bad, the subflooring had given out in some places during previous showings). I also don't see why banks wouldn't consider these houses as more of liabilities than assets given how many don't appear to even bother maintaining their properties. I'd be pretty eager to get a $150k current-value house with $6k/yr in maintenance and taxes far away from my hands, even if there was a $200k amount in default, rather than banking on a kind of supply-reducing oligopoly on the US housing market working out.