hummer

When Will the Housing Market Bottom?

You claim homes are a lousy investment. I disagree.

A home is your place for sanctity and reflection, rest and happiness. If you love a home, in a great neighborhood and it brings you satisfaction, this is a better investment. The price of your family's well being, or your own, is not monetary. You comfort and lifestyle are priceless.

Further, a home is a great investment providing you buy in the right neighborhood, a the right time and the right price. Old addage, location, location and location.

This cyle will turn too and when it does, those how held on will not lose but will make money as long as you followed the previous rule of advice.

So I do take exception to Jan814 because with the houses we own, both where we work and where we play, I would not sell either unless I wanted to exchange one house for another in a home or play area. Which is when we'd have a problem in that if you need to sell a home to get another, that market is dead. No one can sell now.

I am hopeful that at some point the market will turn. You wil have to sell for less but in turn you'll get more for your buck on the other end.




On Dec 25 12:00 PM jan814 wrote:

> One can think of houses in two ways--as a place to live, and as an
> investment.
>
> (1) Considered as an investment, house prices have a long way down
> before they stabilize at what they were in 2000 or 2002 or at a lower
> price than that.
>
> It was all a bubble based on economic reality. After all, the NASDAQ
> still is way below what it was in 2000 during that other bubble.
>
>
> (2) The housing market probably is the most imperfect market there
> is. Unlike stocks or bonds (or ETFs and mutual funds), one cannot
> sell whenever one wants to.
> With financial markets, one can get out when one is down, say 10%.
> With housing, one usually can't. And the market may never come back
> to what one paid. Think of Detroit, for example or any other rust
> belt town, where home values have disappeared.
>
> Since homes are a lousy investment, there must be some psychological
> and emotional need that is satisfied by real property. I guess it
> is that one can go and touch the House. But then so can arsonists
> and termites.
>
> I'm not saying, never buy a house to live in. Americans are so incredibly
> rude, that living in an apartment or a condo sucks. The more space
> between one self and one's "neighbors," the better. But the house
> one lives in is entirely an expense and never a investment. And houses
> other than the one one lives in are a truly lousy investment.