Posted on 12/31/2022 8:42:14 AM PST by patriot torch
As a Denver area real estate investor, I have five active listings and one in San Francisco. Not the best time, but the prices are still holding at pre-covid levels with longer DOM. I’ll still do well on most of them, but it’s the current buying opportunities of distressed sellers, who need fast help, that will be strong long term investments...well, barring any further Biden proggy related damage. (Oh, who am I kidding? I’m screwed.)
Agreed. Unless you are willing to live in a cardboard box under a bridge after selling your house and waiting for the market to tank before buying a new one, then trying to play the housing market with one house is very difficult.
How can families buy with interest rates double what they were?
Glad I got to where I’m going with zero plans to move or sell.
This is BS.
With inflation steadily driving up the cost of the essentials of daily living (food, shelter, transportation, energy, healthcare) there’s less and less disposable income left over for discretionary items. THAT will soon become a very serious problem for what is a consumer driven economy. And putting such purchases on the plastic is driving up debt at higher interest rates.
I don’t see how we avoid a serious economic contraction.
In my area there are tons of commercial properties sitting vacant. A very large mall built in the early 70’s just sold at auction for a couple million. Most anchor stores have left and the majority of the Leases are now vacated.
At the same time many department stores have closed and are now being converted to storage units. Which are actually a very profitable business. Low overhead and low risk. With high potential.
Paid off our house over two years ago. As soon as the crash hits, and prices start to get to the bottom, I’ll buy my retirement home. Of course, plan B is to stay where I am.
Building homes is expensive. The costs aren’t going down so I don’t see why existing homes would ‘crash’. There may be a correction but I don’t like the word ‘crash’.
I worry about the day they stop making new property. That’ll upset the supply and demand curves.
(it’s an old real-estate joke — “they aren’t making any more property”)
Quite right. There could easily be straightforward regulation in this regard that better served the nation's broader interests.
“If Baby Boomers decide to scale down as they retire, especially if they fear increasing heating and AC bills in the future, then at least the larger homes will no longer go up in value but will be seen as a liability.”
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Retirees have more than just higher energy bills to worry about. Home insurance, property taxes, and general upkeep and maintenance costs are all rising. And for many people retirement incomes are not rising fast enough to keep up, so it makes sense to downsize.
Buy a smaller home in a nice area and enjoy your retirement.
I watched guys in 2009 buy homes in Minneapolis for 20 percent of their value and they are now selling them and moving their money to Florida.
Interest rates are still low by historic standards. Also, avoid 5 bedroom 3 bath granite countertop homes. A 1300 square ft 3 bed 1 bath laminate countertop house would work fine for most families.
“it really doesn’t matter if the value of your home goes up or down”
Three words:
Property Taxes
You get to the crux in the end of that post. I think the dirty little secret is that the more civilized countries are seeing population declines, so they need to allow lots of immigrants to keep the population growing. I think even the republicans, secretly, believe we need all those people flooding in across the border to keep the whole ponzi scheme from utterly collapsing.
Oh, and if investors (e.g. chinese investors) bow out of the home market, values would really plummet. Housing is almost like concert tickets being scalped. Take away the scalpers nd the prices plummet.
Personally, I think the residential real estate market became completely unhinged once homes started to be seen as means of wealth accumulation instead of what they are: HOMES.
We now have multi-trillion-dollar debt markets built on this lunacy, and governments now make idiotic policy decisions just to keep the house of cards from collapsing.
Let’s not forget that a minority of the population is comprised of nuclear families. This isn’t the 1890s-1970s anymore. Seeing homeownership as an investment opportunity above other things is not new and has been common my entire life (I was born in 1976).
There is no planning or accounting for the vengeance, greed, and stupidity of a bureaucrat.
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They are not stupid. They are clever, calculating schemers who are very good at empire building and finding ever new ways to fleece the taxpayers.
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