Posted on 04/24/2008 9:02:16 AM PDT by Lorianne
Economists say home prices are nowhere near hitting bottom. But even in regions that have taken a beating, some neighborhoods remain practically unscathed. And a pattern is emerging as to which neighborhoods those are.
The ones with short commutes are faring better than places with long drives into the city. Some analysts see a pause in what has long been inexorable — urban sprawl.
The Washington, D.C., metropolitan area has been hit hard. Prices tumbled an average of 11 percent in the past year. That's the big picture. But a look at Ashburn, Va., about 40 miles from the center of town, finds a steeper fall.
At a recent auction of foreclosed homes north of Washington, in the Maryland suburbs, there weren't many takers. All of the addresses are far from downtown, and average commute times are among the highest in the nation.
It's a different story for properties that are closer to the city's center — in areas of Montgomery County that are on the edge of Washington.
"When I have a listing in this neighborhood, there are often 40 to 60 people coming through the open houses," said Pam Ryan-Brye, an agent with Long and Foster Real Estate.
Inside the city, median home prices are actually up 3.5 percent from a year ago.
Jonathan Hill, vice president of Metropolitan Regional Information Systems, which tracks home sales, sat in his office recently, clicking through page after page of price data sorted by ZIP code. There were a lot of negative numbers, but not in places that are close in or near public transit.
The 20912 ZIP code, for example, showed almost a 10 percent increase in average sales price, Hill said.
(Excerpt) Read more at npr.org ...
urban sprawl gone bad.
I keep reading about how doomed real estate is, but yet every time I check recent sales I see my neighborhood is holding strong from the “top of the bubble” prices we paid in 2006. With a low fixed rate mortgage in the central part of town, even the “worst time to buy” isn’t that bad after all.
I read years ago that this thing starts on the fringes and moves in to the center.
This time it is exacerbated by the hyper-inflation of gas prices.
And yes, it is HYPER-inflation.
Yes, this trend was predicted as much as 15 years ago. It’s now coming to pass.
With fuel prices the way they are and probably getting worse, the exurbs will become the new ‘slums’.
Here is a neighborhood destined to be a real bad place. My wife and I happened on it on a Sunday drive. Miles even from a gas station.
http://maps.google.com/maps?hl=en&ie=UTF8&ll=47.070531,-122.175436&spn=0.013533,0.043087&t=h&z=15
>>With a low fixed rate mortgage in the central part of town, even the “worst time to buy” isn’t that bad after all.<<
Think of it this way. You own a lot of stock and it is september of 1929. Looks GREAT!
So far...
See my post #6. When my wife and I saw it we said it looked like it would either become a ghost town or a slum. The map does not do it justice. You drive miles in a nice valley and then at the top of this plateau in the middle of nowhere someone built a neighborhood. It’s just surreal.
I live in a nice part of Alexandria, VA. Believe me, the creeping crud of lower real estate prices has finally arrived.
In the past three months, there has been an appreciable change in prices - but many folks are refusing to lower the prices of their homes. That’s just about a guarantee to prolong the length of time that their houses sit and sit.
Mind you, prices aren’t nearly as bad as out in the counties beyond the Beltway, but they ain’t going up.
So in spite of what the left-wingers tell us again and again, the market works exactly the way it’s supposed to work!
> This time it is exacerbated by the hyper-inflation of gas prices.
> And yes, it is HYPER-inflation
Please don’t fall for the MSM’s overdramatization. It’s not “inflation” and it’s by no means “hyper.” It’s just a normal market adjustment to a change in the underlying conditions of supply and demand.
(If you can find a documented case of hyperinflation that occurred without a huge increase in the money supply, please call Milton Friedman right away!)
Still better than renting. Now I have the yard for a vegetable garden if I need it! haha
There’s been a huge increase in the MZM measure of the money supply, but the M0 (physical dollars) in circulation in America is declining.
One of the reasons everyone is scratching their heads is because we’re experiencing symptoms of monetary inflation and deflation at the same time.
That location pasted into #6 does not look too bad so far as being in the boonies is concerned.
Up here in north Ga, subdivisions are typically miles away from everything. I think the nearest station for us is like 4 or 5 miles away. Ditto for grocery stores.
Move them out of the country where they can have a garden and move them into the cities where they can have food stamps.
The increase in gas prices IS hyper-inflation of gas prices. I was just talking about gas, not the general economy. ;)
Same thing is about to happen north of the Mason-Dixon. The southern tier of PA was becoming a bedroom community for DC commuters...now MS-13 is moving in.
Cumming, GA .... does Elvis still hang at the Lantern Inn??
I can’t agree more. Living up in Dawson County and commuting into Cumming to work, I wouldn’t trade my out-of-the-way neighborhood in the farmland and forests for anything in the world.
Unfortunately, he and his wife “Patsy Cline” have moved on (as far as I know). The building’s still there, but I’m pretty sure that it isn’t called the Lantern Inn any longer.
The sad details surrounding the end of a 41 year tradition in North Georgia.
http://bca.ns.ca/forum/showthread.php?t=726
This is GREAT NEWS!! Mrs. VanShuyten and I are planning to move right to that area in a month or two. If prices keep going down, we might be able to afford TWO dogs (and maybe a new pistol or two for me).
When my lease comes up I'm gonna give some nice $700K+ vacant properties I've been eyeing a rental offer. Same math. I expect it to work. Paying their mortgage for a year is better than nothing for them. I'll continue this 'til the market hits bottom, then buy.
I think it totally depends on location. `In my city, the overall effect has been negative but that is almost exclusively in the “far out” parts of town no one wants to live in because its a 2-hour commute. We got our mortgage for the same as what we were paying down the street in rent (including taxes, insurance, etc.), and no one’s rent is going down despite housing price drops (not here anyway).
But in other cities the overall downturn is so significant I imagine there would be many ways to save by renting. Especially if $700,000 houses are sitting around empty! Dang!
in spite of the left-wingers’ economic ignorance combined with their arrogance...
Free markets and the way they produce results baffle and scare lefties. Their worldview/paradigm is such that the best way to get results is to have some elite smart people at the top telling everyone at the “bottom” what to do.
Predictable and to be expected. The more expensive fuel becomes the more expensive that commute becomes. I would never ever ever live 40 miles from my job voluntarily... I want to keep that 1-2 hours a day to myself, let alone the cost of gas and wear and tear on a vehicle.
As commuting becomes more expensive, downtown locations for businesses will become more desireable as well, as companies will find it more difficult to recruit employees when they are located so far from city centers supported by public transportation, and convient/short commutes.
The NPR environuts are in their glory. Everyone will soon ride public transit! OR, they can trade the SUV in and get a smaller commuter car - which is also happening in large numbers. That way, they can stay out in the sprawling suburban towns away from the crime and dirt and pollution in the cities....oh and the libs running the city governments and the associated HIGH taxes.
Isn’t it amazing that the lefties squawk about gas prices even though they are producing exactly the society that they’d like (for everyone else).
It does expose their motives - they want everyone else to stop using THEIR resources and living in THEIR open spaces.
“I live in a nice part of Alexandria, VA. Believe me, the creeping crud of lower real estate prices has finally arrived.”
Sorry to hear that. In North Arlington, near the Ballston Metro station (where my home is located), we’re not having any problem. Values have actually increased. And homes are selling — an open house I looked into a couple of weeks ago was SWAMPED! I think the article is correct — if you live within walking distance of a subway station in the Washington area, your property value is assured, thanks to the horrendous traffice in this region.
I’m within 200 yards of a subway station. Got lots of people in to see the house during several open houses. No offers...until I dropped the price a mite.
Sorry, but I don't believe a word of it. oil prices are going through the roof to pay for the arab/muslim war against us, the US.
> The increase in gas prices IS hyper-inflation of gas prices. I was just talking about gas, not the general economy <
As Friedman taught, and as countless others have demonstrated both logically and empirically, “Inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon.” Taken in isolation, gasoline prices really have nothing to do with inflation. Pick your own definitions of “inflation” and “hyper” if you will. But if you do so, then reasoned discourse isn’t possible.
Futures markets are very much a part of the supply-and-demand mechanism. Indeed, they are an extremely useful and important part of our economy. Without them, the efficiency of our truly miraculous econmic system would decline significantly.
In fact I'd go so far to say that by dismissing futures markets in such an offhand way, you seem to throw in your lot with Marxists, other leftwing "progressives," most of the MSM, and populist demagogues like Lou Dobbs and Pat Buchanan -- none of whom have a proper appreciation for the workings of a free-market, captialist economy.
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