iShares Dow Jones US Real Estate (IYR)

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  • commenter
    Ames
    Tiedeman
    Jul 24 06:52 AM
    My Website
    This Can't Be Helping Real Estate [view article]
    Rates will only go higher. The banks want their money back. Reply
  • commenter
    johnthebear
    Jul 21 10:38 PM
    Just How Terrible Is Housing as an Asset Class? Roubini Weighs In [view article]
    An observation:

    State and local property tax revenues are about to be drastically reduced as tax appeals skyrocket. Tax officials will not roll over without a fight, but when revenues are cut 30%, there will be a lot of pain that will not go away for many years. No one is predicting re-inflation of property values to the former level anytime soon. It will take a long time, IMO.     Reply
  • commenter
    TheyKnowNoth
    ing
    Jul 21 02:53 PM
    Just How Terrible Is Housing as an Asset Class? Roubini Weighs In [view article]
    Rent or Own
    If one has to spend too much money on housing/shelter...ther... be no money for anything else.

    Rent or own....it has got to be affordable...that excess money can then be used to help the consumerism economy of ours.

    Bottomline -affordable housing is a min a government must provide to 'market' to its pple..... basic infracstructure: housing, transport, telecommunications, news, health care etcs these are always going to be profitable corporate or government owned.

    Free up the money for the failed SS, med, and allow american to use the SS and the 401k to make monthly payment for the mortgage.
    Reply
  • commenter
    Lee.
    Raconteur
    Jul 21 01:33 PM
    Just How Terrible Is Housing as an Asset Class? Roubini Weighs In [view article]
    friend
    Jul 17 01:58 PM:

    Home is the essential and a must to any family .

    You assume a home MUST be a house, single family, stand alone dwelling.
    People can rent a house, live in an apartment, condo, townhouse, efc.
     Reply
  • commenter
    Zeppelin
    Jul 21 09:47 AM
    Just How Terrible Is Housing as an Asset Class? Roubini Weighs In [view article]
    So, how can we get rid of the current misguided FED and get Mr. Roubini to take over the reigns, as FED Chairman Can we "VOID" Bernankes' contract, due to incompetence? Reply
  • commenter
    Bigbuilder
    Jul 21 07:33 AM
    Just How Terrible Is Housing as an Asset Class? Roubini Weighs In [view article]
    The major points are correct:

    1. Diminishing marginal utility. A family of 4 can live in 1,800 square feet OR in 3,600 square feet. They are NOT twice as well off in double the space.

    2. Opportunity cost of capital. IF you live in 1,800 square feet and invest the difference ANYWHERE else, you will be richer in the long term. This is true for individuals and for the entire nation. We will miss the possible productivity increases that wiser investment would have created.

    3. Over leveraged personal balance sheets are reflected, for a short time, in a strong consumer economy. BUT, leverage on the way down is a killer.

    4. The nations under funded long term committments (e.g. social security and medicare) will "bust our chops" financially. Excessive debt at all levels AND capital tied up in media rooms and fancy kitchens will not pay for that.

    5. Personally occupied housing is only an investment if you are exiting the housing game. When you die, your heirs will realize this "investment"... Until then, you will merely shift the current value of your housing capital from one location to another, or from one form (i.e. owning) to another (i.e. renting).

    6. The housing bubble will destroy neighborhoods and local governments and will inflict real costs (both dollars and quality of life destruction) far in excess of the "paper" loses on bad mortgages. The collateral consequence for national productivity and morale of the citizens is very negative.

    Basically, there was no "free" market. Intervention by all levels of government to favor a specific behavior by consumers was done in order to create quick wealth for the campaign contributors of your elected officials. This mess will be an affliction for decades.     Reply
  • commenter
    Gary Lucido
    Jul 18 07:53 PM
    My Website
    Just How Terrible Is Housing as an Asset Class? Roubini Weighs In [view article]
    The idea that a home is a great investment is one of these myths propagated by the government and the real estate industry. The government has a vested interest in people owning homes because people who own homes don't launch a revolution against the government. In case you are interested I did a post a while back on housing prices in Chicago (where I live) and what has really happened with them. It's just not a great investment. The story is the same for other cities as well.
    blog.lucidrealty.com/2.../     Reply
  • commenter
    SteveFronte
    Jul 18 03:00 AM
    Just How Terrible Is Housing as an Asset Class? Roubini Weighs In [view article]
    in the 70's and 80's the dollar fell in real value and houses were a good investment.. but is it the same now? if everyone's money loses value then it's an even playing field but what if everyone's money doesn't fall the same distance and the dollar, when the banks finish their desperate sell off of long term foreign holdings that currently they are repatriating and keeping the dollar up lately.....then falls again even harder?

    that's might be a problem if most of the things you count on are in dollars, example, Treasury bonds (the Trust Fund).
    Reply
  • commenter
    iThinkBig
    Jul 17 10:27 PM
    My Website
    Just How Terrible Is Housing as an Asset Class? Roubini Weighs In [view article]
    Investment in innovation has been severely lacking for five years now. Is it coincidence wages have remained flat, especially considering some guy in India or China can push paper for 1/4 of the price? I remember trying to raise money for my Consumer Healthcare marketing venture a couple of years ago. The options were:

    1) Skew my business plan with lots of fluff, get $15 million in VC money (that was the investment threshold, at least at the time) and give up 70% equity.
    2) Accept $500k in angel investment and give up 51% equity.

    To a skilled innovator and entrepenuar, would you accept either? No, of course not. I did what any skillled enrepenuar does that also understands economics, I went on the road and sold my product with the sales team, kept all equity and since I had such deep skin in the game, the model was profitable. Actually, still is even with an ad depression going on right now. The technology and methodology were always based on Economics 101 to create VERY good sales leads. Problem is, the market didn't want it at the time. Now the risk sharing model is paying off in droves, because all the marketers with a cushy job buying the cheapest widgets to show they were doing something are all gone. Nice to have only a handful of competitors left. The reason I am saying all of this is simple, all the easy paper money in housing is evaporating, the smart investors left to mop up assets for pennies on the dollar and it pays to do business according to fundamentals, always! The other lesson is it's time to innovate massively in energy. This will happen despite what some greedy, self-serving dinks attempt to do to prevent it. They can only forestall our American ingenuity.     Reply
  • commenter
    Flash Gordon
    Jul 17 09:58 PM
    Just How Terrible Is Housing as an Asset Class? Roubini Weighs In [view article]
    I've been seeing this argument a lot lately and it is interesting. They are right. The U.S. passed the point where larger better houses helps overall productivity a long time ago. That said, I enjoy my too big house. I lived in the bay area a long time and I tell you, it takes a lot of guts to do the sensible thing and buy a house you can afford when everyone who was irrational and bought more house they can afford made a lot of money because it always kept going up a lot. Only recently has it dropped and you can tell, they are all in shock (except the people in "the city" and there time will come.) Reply
  • commenter
    syndicat
    Jul 17 09:48 PM
    Just How Terrible Is Housing as an Asset Class? Roubini Weighs In [view article]
    Broadbased home ownership is very desirable. There was excess and the excess is being corrected. Like always.

    The US Gov't actually lessened the "subsidies" by reducing interest deductions on large mortgages and second homes, eliminating property tax deductions for those taxpayers in the AMT, and ending the ability to roll the entire proceeds of a sale of a home (regardless of price) to another same or higher priced home with zero tax liability.     Reply
  • commenter
    johnthebear
    Jul 17 07:59 PM
    Just How Terrible Is Housing as an Asset Class? Roubini Weighs In [view article]
    Unfortunately, it became politically expedient to talk about the percentage of home ownership as justification for lack of mortgage standards.

    I expected more from government than this lack of moral understanding of the economic role that housing plays in the countries long term well being. I pray that the next administration, whoever, will require all levels of government regulators to follow traditional common sense as well as the rules.

    The tragedy that has befallen American homeowners and the world wide loss of $14 trillion dollars in stock prices was totally avoidable, and it will take decades to recover.

    Shame, shame on them.     Reply
  • commenter
    Malkiel
    Jul 17 05:50 PM
    Just How Terrible Is Housing as an Asset Class? Roubini Weighs In [view article]
    It's always amusing to listen to these conservative economists who live in such rarified air that all the fundamentals of life on planet earth can be ignored if they inconvenience pure market theory. The last I knew, economics was the study of how goods and services were exchanged by humans living and dying as humans within the limitations of nature. Shelter is one of those fundamentals that can't be ignored--I suspect that Roubini would consider agriculture a waste of time too, but to what point? People have to eat, and the resources have to be allocated to enable that "unproductive&quo... part of the economy to continue.

    It's been a truism of the last 20 years that consumer activity drove the US economy. Instead of a late-Victorian world where humans lived in squalor so that every penny of the economy could be devoted to production profiting the few, we now have an economy where all the members of the society can use the forces of the market to incrementally improve their conditions. People who owned their shelter have a salable asset that they can sell or barter in old age for medical care and nursing home shelter. Does Roubini have a problem with that? Please Mr. Scrooge, can we have just one more sausage to fill our empty stomachs before we go back to your assembly line?     Reply
  • commenter
    Umm, yeah
    Jul 17 04:21 PM
    Just How Terrible Is Housing as an Asset Class? Roubini Weighs In [view article]
    Isn't the bigger problem that people were overusing their ability to get credit/loans? They bought too big of a house (assuming the equity would grow at the same astronomical rate), filled the garage with 2 or more SUV's (again either leased or bought on credit), filled the house with furniture (again bought on credit), a big screen TV (again on credit), and just now realized that they're spending more each month than they earn? Especially now that food, gas, energy, etc., have all significantly risen in price. Reply
  • commenter
    Wez
    Jul 17 03:52 PM
    Just How Terrible Is Housing as an Asset Class? Roubini Weighs In [view article]
    Are we at or near a bottom in housing when we start to doubt the very usefulness of owning a home? Reply

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