Wisdom-Seeker

A Tale of Two Coasts

Not only is Florida on the East Coast, but last time I checked, Seattle on the West Coast was doing at least as well as New York.

Article should be retitled "tale of two cities", but oops, that was already taken 150 years ago.

Bigger question is, will New York really come out okay, or are they just going to be a late bloomer?

Updated January '08 Case-Shiller Housing Data

Read Ritholtz and you'll realize the Bespoke guys can't tell a "better than expected" number from a "worse than expected but spun like mad" number. An objective look at the slightly fresher but much less objectively valuable information from the Realtors *really* shows that February was *not* an improvement. The real impact of the Case-Shiller numbers is that they show the real estate crash was (still) getting worse even faster in January -- except in Boston.

Case-Shiller Housing Index Continues to Slide

I suspect this set of data will prove to be a tipping point, though the market hasn't clued in just yet. The data clearly show that the current real estate crunch is worse than the 1990 crunch. The only historical periods that are in the same league are the early 1970s and the late 1920s. Neither of which bodes well for the world.

As an added tidbit - the latest Case-Shiller monthly data show that the downtrend accelerated in fully 19 of 20 markets. And Tampa only improved from a -1.8% drop to a -1.4% month-over-month drop, which is hardly reassuring. The problem is national and the actions taken prior to the November sales failed to slow the rate of decline.