Nowhere Near a Real Estate Bottom 34 comments
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The real estate bottom is so far in the future it’s not even worth attempting a prediction. Real estate is not a liquid investment. Selling a property is time consuming, energy draining and expensive. Most people can not afford to buy anything without a mortgage; most people require the assistance of an agent; most people live in the only property they own; most people simply do not bounce around too often.
There
are some advantages to these costs. The real estate market has
historically been a much more stable market than others in which day
trading and hedge fund algorithmic transactions often cause excessive
volatility. But it also means people will only be able to gauge true
market valuations when they (or their neighbors) list a house for sale…
how often does that happen? Every 5 years? 10 years? 15 years? It
simply takes time for people to recognize that even real estate markets
can fluctuate on the down side.
In general, this will always result in a real estate market that lags the general economy. Thus, anyone who accepts the preceding statement as reality should easily recognize the ridiculousness of predicting a real estate bottom when we haven’t even experienced the recession yet!
Television news is almost always about someone else and people have difficulty recognizing when they are the subjects of a story. It’s one thing for other people to be suffering from a real estate collapse, but "surely that won’t happen in my neighborhood." People have been bred by the financial industrial complex since childhood to believe the family home will always be their best investment. Re-educating millions of Americans is not a simple task.
When
you take into consideration the shear magnitude of this bubble, the
largest credit bubble in American history, you must sober your hopes
for a shallow recession. When home owners take interest only adjustable
rate mortgages and have zero equity, why would they struggle to make
increasing payments? As equity disappears, people all over America will
be walking away from their mortgage in their millions, often leaving
behind dilapidated properties that not only allow banks to recover
nothing, but incur extra costs to dismantle the unsafe building.
The banks don’t have a clue what’s going on, and these insignificant write offs we have witnessed to date are just a fraction of what is to come. Bernanke is now even recommending that banks reduce mortgage principles to restore owner equity and give people an incentive to remain in their house. He would not be recommending such a drastic plan unless the alternative is much worse.
This crisis will not be cleared in a few months - perhaps not even a few years.
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The Fed could put an end to the mortgage debacle by buying up the marked down mortgage paper at 20 cents on the $, putting it in the US Treasury and selling it into the market a few years from now at a profit. This was done successfully during the depression successfully. Cramer recommended this last week; Allan Binder a few weeks ago. Unless it happens business recession will deepen.
I thought you Americans were the ultimate optimists? Apparently not.
Love,
One Canadian.
Yes, indeed there is more dirty laundry out there regarding this credit mess and more defaults to come, but I fail to see this event feeding us an endless stream of deadbeat homeowners for years. What would perhaps be helpful is for some respected, credible entity within the banking/mortgage sector coming forward with some truthful statistics that clear the air on how much money was lent during the last several years using 'lax' policies. That would be money loaned to either speculators flipping houses for a quick buck or to folks that would have been marginally or non-qualified for a mortgage under past practices of prudent lending. Perhaps having this data might help place some believeable bounds on the magnitude of the problem. Instead we get nothing but lots of hot air and a steady stream of alarmist blather from a cadre of psuedu experts, talking heads and those people with a private self-serving agenda that otherwise have no worthy credentials to be rationally discussing this matter. (i.e., it's a textbook example of the 1st Amendment in hyper-overdrive.)
For the exception of those people in financial trouble who were otherwise speculating or those in trouble who are willing to easily give up on the dream of home ownership, where are the vast majority of the other people that really what to keep their home going to live? And why will someone in their right mind give up their property and walk away simply because their equity supposedly has vanished? How will they know this unless they are currently in default OR they are urgently trying to sell into a depressed market? Do we really believe property values will rationally trend toward zero?
As you point out real estate is rather illiquid, and that is true even during reasonable market conditions. So unless the owner is in default, or they were speculating heavily beforehand and now in default, why would any sane person otherwise choose to leave their home? Would you sell your home in a panic simply because a local realtor told you local values were down? I think not.
I have more confidence in the average American Joe or Jane that owns their home with a mortgage. They still want a solid roof over their head, they seek stability in their lives, they pay their bills and they are not prone to abusing the condition of their home when their name is listed on the deed.
As far as your remark about a recession is concerned, hey wake up and smell the coffee! We're there friend. Will it be a nasty one? Hard to say except that I think that the vast majority of we responsible homeowners are not ready to pitch a tent yet or hit the rails as the]hobos did in the 30s.
That's one man's opinion.
I disagree that the housing recession will drag on too long precisely because it is an illiquid, by appointment only market. But that doesn't detract from the author's second good point that the housing bottom will lag the economic bottom by a decent interval and we shouldn't get suckered.
Since college, the longest time I have lived at one address has been 5 years. While I made out on home ownership during those 5 years, I worried about getting caught in the wrong end of a cycle. In 20/20 hindsight, I was a fool. I should have bought two or three houses, spent more time at Home Depot and saved myself alot of mental effort looking at equity markets.
I think this recession will bring a healthy amount of skepticism into the equation and the result will be a significantly higher level of household savings as it becomes obvious that there is no "magic bullet" for family financial (including retirement) planning. That new pool of savings will transform US national and trade accounts far more significantly than the misguided officials who think we can temporarily devalue our way out of our problems.
As global investors, that one change will dramatically reorder the economic landscape. No longer can emerging markets count on unlimited consumer demand in the US. Places like China and India will spend more money on infrastructure to build domestic economies capable of satisfying the needs of growing middle classes in those countries. I could go on with other changes, but you get the idea...the next 3 years will see the markets trace a different path from the past 3.
The US government can and should engage in activities that help the market to clear. It's big and powerful and quite frankly, we pay these people to keep an eye on this sort of thing. However, Congress and the officials at Treasury and the FED should be very careful about trying to "fix" the market with brilliant new schemes. Those brilliant new schemes tend to create more barriers than they tear down.
And lack of barriers is the key. The globe is awash with fiat money but not really liquidity. Liquidity implies movement and the near frozen inner workings of the credit system have kept that cash from working its magic. Money may be the root of all evil and we may be a bit sore we handed so much over to our pals in the Middle East and China, but that investment flow, combined with a more subdued US consumer will bring the US back into the economic game...probably in the lead.
Think hard now, boys and girls - and think about who caused 9/11 and who benefits from the 'War on Terror'! Who expects to benefit from the total collapse of the American (and Global) economic system - and would like to replace the Old World Order with the New World Order? Does anyone here have a clue? (I doubt it).
When declining worldwide production of oil finally hits the fan people will be caught holding their overpriced, low quality homes far off in suburbia and exurbia with no buyers in their right mind in sight. Exurbias followed by commuter suburbias are the future's next slums. Good luck suburban home owners.
When the fog clears, not only will you wonder if you can ever sell your home to (retire, downsize, cashout, etc...) you will also have to wonder if your grandchildren will ever be able to get on an airplane for a spring break trip to Cancun.
Just a different point of view.
That having been said, I do agree generally with the observation that it will take some time for balance to return to the residential market. I saw an analysis that indicated that the current total value for residential property in the USA is about $22 trillion. In order for that total value number to return to the long term trend line that measures the relation of the value of housing to the total economy, there needs to be a drop in value of $4 trillion. This adjustment could come via increases in the rest of the economy, but in any event, this is a long painful journey and those who tied up significant capital in assets that consume $$ rather than produce $$, the pain will be great.
What needs to be seen is that the fog has been created for many decades and we get a daily dose of fog from the MSM (MainStreamMedia), which includes the NAR and similar fog-blowers.
Will the fog ever clear and allow Americans to SEE! all those inconvenient truths? And what about The Truth - how many will SEE! that before it's too late?
There will soon be shock, awe and suffering in America like you cannot imagine. The loss on your vacation home investment will be the least of your worries!
And why are the Markets going up, pray tell? Are we into the 'hyper' of hyperinflation already?
Thanks for the cryptic, apocalyptic, poorly masked and veiled attempt to float your anti-Semite conspiracy theory.
Most people want to love, laugh, be loved, and enjoy the fruits of their labor. When economic turmoil interrupts this paradigm and they're forced to focus on the immediate future, people often don’t have time to SEE anything. This does not make them sheep. Because people are solving problems, and not focusing on the problem doesn’t make them blind. All they are trying to do is get back to the joy of life. Why would people want to spend time SEEing something, when they could spend time with family and loved ones?
You are redundant!
Not only that, you're missing my point (intentionally, no doubt).
You SEE!, only the Truth will make us free - no matter how much we enjoy the fog or our loved ones or life in general or our (rapidly dwindling) credit and are hell-bent on having a good time (courtesy of Mammon and his friends, the Zionists - like Ben or Sir Alan).
One more thing, are you familiar with the book: "Zionism: The Real Enemy of the Jews"? Read it - it's NOT anti-Semitic!
Ben is prepared to drop untold and freshly printed $billions into the pockets of his banker, Corporate and Wall St. friends - most of which are technically insolvent, right? They will use these 'dollars from heaven' to lend to (financially and morally) bankrupt homeowners and other needy Americans at an ever-increasing spread in a vain attempt to recover their monumental losses within the next millennium, right?
Give me a break! (instead of those deceptive and greedy bankers)
And just remember USA is not the only game in town. If through miss management this country ends up with a devalued living standard resembling the old Eastern Europe. Then the business class, the intellectual class and anyone with any get up and go will just leave!
We do need to get away from oil, though. Agreed.
If you're REALLY worried, come to Canada. Our beer is stronger.
Love,
The Canadian