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Posted on 05/30/2011 9:29:40 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
The U.S. housing market is going through an adjustment of historic proportions. Before 2006, when the housing slump commenced, American home builders regularly built as many as 2 million new houses annually, rarely less than a million. This amount was needed to keep up with new household formation, immigration, homeowners moving up, and replacement due to obsolescence. Since then the number of new houses built has dropped drastically—the seasonally adjusted annual figure announced by the federal government in February 2011 was about 400,000! What's going on?
The recession, obviously. High unemployment and unease about the economy have made potential first-time homebuyers leery of entering the market, and many have decided to wait on the side lines. Although house prices have fallen, few are convinced that they have bottomed, and no one wants to buy a house and see its price decline. The large number of foreclosed (or about to be foreclosed) houses on the market, which account for no less than four out of 10 sales of existing homes, likewise dampens demand for new houses. And those willing to take the plunge discover that, despite low interest rates, lenders who were burned by the subprime mess now require large down payments. The other chief cause for weak demand is a slowdown in household formation—the U.S. Census reports that the rate of household formation is currently lower than at any time since 1947, as people put off getting married and starting a family. According to my colleague, real estate economist Peter Linneman, the marginal household size, which has historically hovered around two or three, shot up to more than six in 2009 and 2010, the result of doubling-up and moving in with relatives.
Common wisdom is that eventually the housing market will stabilize.....
(Excerpt) Read more at slate.com ...
Get to know me ...
To meet the global ideal we will all be piled up in urban projects.
Do you have a link to “are already paying dues to the UN to belong to ICLEI.”
I tried to look around at their site, but I could not find it.
Thanks!
Hilarious.
The age of fake communities connected by a socialist freeway system are over. That social model was never viable over the long term. It was created by cheap, domestic gasoline and is dying with cheap, domestic gasoline.
Man is a social animal. He was not meant to live in sterile, isolated tracts of plastic houses. He was not meant to live in a place where ownership of a motor vehicle is required in order to live. He was meant to live in a walkable city, like the polis of Athens. The very word “civilization” and “citizen” are derived from the word “city”. The word “heathen”, by contrast, means “those who live in the heath” — the countryside.
There’s nothing inhuman about living in the country, of course. The problem is that people who live in the suburbs want the pleasures of country living without the inconveniences. It would be one thing if city people who wanted a country lifestyle had settled for real country living, without convenient retail shopping, restaurants and so forth. It would have been fine if they were willing to farm of ranch or engage in some rural means of earning a living. But no, the suburban locusts had to have their shopping malls, fast food joints, and (ultimately) their cubicle jobs “out there”. End result: another city where “the country” once was — and the locusts move on, leaving another empty shell as a home for the Section 8s. Madness!
Even so, it’s not so much the suburbanites themselves that are the problem. They are mostly just people who failed to think the whole idea through. The problem is the acres and acres of fantastically expensive, taxpayer-funded concrete required to support the average suburbanite. The suburbs worked fine when they were connected to the cities by interurban electric railways. But when the government killed the railroads with their gigantic, socialist freeway systems, it was all over.
The suburbs wrecked the countryside of America. Well, no more. The era of paving over the countryside in order to give working class city people the chance to play “let’s pretend we live in the country” is over. If people want to live in the country, they should by God live in the country and live the life of a country dweller — a life of isolation and inconvenience, without dry cleaning, movie theaters, convenience stores, and paved roads. If they want city conveniences, they should suck it up, move back into town, and fight for their neighborhoods, as millions of us already do.
Join us and help drive out the parasites. We can rebuild the cities!
“Wrong. When the housing market returns,...”
Starting when?????
Are you for real? You love rail but you think highways are socialistic? Wait, wait, I know! You’re Willie Green’s sockpuppet!
What was so special about May 19th that you thought to sign up here?
What was so special about May 19th that you thought to sign up here?
‘The suburbs worked fine when they were connected to the cities by interurban electric railways. But when the government killed the railroads with their gigantic, socialist freeway systems, it was all over.’
Socialist Freeway System? Excuse me, but, in my state, $.42 per gallon is collected and only half of that money is used to build and maintain our roads. The other half goes to some socialist agenda that not self supporting like Amtrak.
Communists (Again, OBAMA AND HIS PEOPLE) want us in Kruschev housing if we live in the cities, and in small, old, dilapidated multi-family dachas if we live in rural areas.
I agree with you. I have a modest sized home on 3 acres close to town in a mid-sized rural community, and can’t wait to move in there.
Currently I am living in a city in a 750 sq.ft two-family multiple story home divided in half with neighbors on either side within spitting distance. The city home costs me TWICE what my place in more rural America costs.
But I don’t totally disagree with the authors prediction. Population in America is going to grow, illegal or otherwise; many of our ethnic imports are popping out babies quicker than spit. That growth and an increasingly expensive land / home / loan combination, will necessarily make new housing more compact and high density.
Across all of the Western United States, there is also the issue of limited water supply; municipalities will continue to consolidate housing and limit new water consumption by rationing and increasing the scope of city water service. Luckily, I have two senior water rights wells on my property, but that is not the norm. A good investment now would be to buy 2-3 acre up to 5 acre dividable lots with senior well rights and single dwellings; bulldoze the older home, divide and ration water in a smaller division for multiple dwellings, then just sell the land to builders.
IBTZ!!
Yep. What do you expect to happen when you corner a bunch of 'rats?
“Wrong. When the housing market returns,...”
Starting when?????
At least ten years from now. There is a glut of housing to work off and the RE market hasn’t bottomed yet and the government already tried allowing anyone that could sign their initials to buy a house, see how well that worked out.
Good little DemocRATS live in the packed warrens of their masters. Rich RAT overloards live in compounds.
Go ahead. No one is stopping you.
But while I might come for a visit once in a while, I'll stay out in the boonies, thanks.
If the shtf, y'all will be eating your neighbors.
Precisely - - in the same kind of concentrated Democrat parasite nests ("cities") they live in.
We haven’t hit bottom. Prices still have to fall considerably before they will begin to approach. Year over year appreciation at 3 percent puts you at about 50 percent of present prices.
Then you have the negative demographic changes. Housing is a terrible market to be in.
Well, I reckon we can just stop hauling the food you city slickers want into town because the dirt road is washed out. So starve. No skin off my a$$. I'll follow the news on the internet. I don't wear a suit often enough that I'll miss a Dry Cleaner, Movies are available on line, and the 'Country Store' was the original "Convenience Store", right down to the gas pump out front (and prices to match).
Roads run both ways, but if you don't want them, kindly start ripping them up at the city limits, it'll slow down the riff-raff.
If they want city conveniences, they should suck it up, move back into town, and fight for their neighborhoods, as millions of us already do.
Fight for high crime, filth, waiting in line--everywhere, high taxes, trash, and did I mention crime? I must have missed the convenience in all that.
No thanks, fight for that all you want.
Join us and help drive out the parasites.
Don't drive them our way. Deal with your own trash, don't dump it out here.
BTW, the Interstate highway system wasn't built to support the suburbs, it was built to facillitate the rapid movement of troops. Suburbs were a side effect.
The same highways now transport tremendous tonnages of goods to the doorsteps of America in ridiculously little time, much of that from rural areas.
Maybe you think we should plow up all those roads and go back to quaint wagon rutted trails, but I think you need some experience out where the sidewalk isn't.
Your food, your energy, and the raw materials which feed the factories all come from out here in the boonies.
It may ding your little egos, but we can manage without you (and especially some of the dumb@ssed city-fied rules), not so the other way around.
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