Real Estate Crash thread

[Benny Profane]

What's the forecast for REIT's in 2013? I'm in VGSIX.

Beware of the new residential rental REITs. That's how these hedgies and private capital guys are trying to make money from all of that crap they're buying up from the banks. What,do you think they wanted to be landlords?

[skiballs]

Considering my mom bought my house for 650,000 eight years ago, and it being evaluated at 1.25 M, it still panned out fairly well.

Hey kid , is your mom hot , post some pics .

[boltonoutlaw]

Beware of the new residential rental REITs. That's how these hedgies and private capital guys are trying to make money from all of that crap they're buying up from the banks. What,do you think they wanted to be landlords?

I'm a landlord.
I got a nice rise off REITS the last two years. I could increase my position or not.

[Bobby Finstock]

Well stalling yes but not dropping.

Considering my mom bought my house for 650,000 eight years ago, and it being evaluated at 1.25 M, it still panned out fairly well.

And Vancouver is a whole notha level.

LOL..yeah that's not a bubble. Wall St shitbags win again...and again...and again...

[Randolph Duke]

LOL..yeah that's not a bubble. Wall St shitbags win again...and again...and again...

Are you an occupier? scorned by the man, stand up and revolt!

Beware of the new residential rental REITs. That's how these hedgies and private capital guys are trying to make money from all of that crap they're buying up from the banks. What,do you think they wanted to be landlords?

Yeah if you are a trader and know that fuck of what you are doing then this is called opportunity BP.

[MontuckyFried]

Things sure seem to be picking up in my neck of the woods. Not sure if it's annually cyclical, or if the ship's really turning around. Still a bit of a resort area real estate jong. Inventory's really dried up over the last few months (in my price range) and prices have definitely been working their way back up. Trying my best to find another place to call home, so hopefully I'm not about to be priced out of the properties I've been looking at. Was going to look at a home this week that's only been on the market a couple weeks. They increased the price due to overwhelming demand apparently and now its already under contract. Blast!

[Bobby Finstock]

As long as Ben Shalom continues to print, home prices will continue to melt up.

[IVplay]

Hey kid , is your mom hot , post some pics .

Way to ruin a thread with intelligent with something dumb like that. That is how I know there is no god because he wouldn't make someone as retarded as you. If there is a god he probably made you a mix of Rosie O'donnell and a rock because you are that stupid.

[Benny Profane]

Yeah if you are a trader and know that fuck of what you are doing then this is called opportunity BP.

Hmmmm........living in the sticks of NH, ski mud and rocks all the time, now you're trash talking finance. Definitely either trust fund or burnt out wall streeter doing the ski hermit thing. But, why the fuck NH?

Back to subject, how the fuck can you trade these things when you know nothing of the fundamentals behind them?

[AdironRider]

I seriously love how Benny shits on everyone else choice of where to live, then "bitches" about Westchester county at the same time.

Northern NH is a million times better than your hell hole, get over it.

[Benny Profane]

I seriously love how Benny shits on everyone else choice of where to live, then "bitches" about Westchester county at the same time.

Northern NH is a million times better than your hell hole, get over it.

When do I ever bitch about Westchester? Damn nice here.

[skiballs]

Way to ruin a thread with intelligent with something dumb like that. That is how I know there is no god because he wouldn't make someone as retarded as you. If there is a god he probably made you a mix of Rosie O'donnell and a rock because you are that stupid.

Look here Jr. , I'm just tryin' to see naked wemans' and tits and shit .
Your mom needs some lovin' too .

[IVplay]

Look here Jr. , I'm just tryin' to see naked wemans' and tits and shit .
Your mom needs some lovin' too .

Can't you get any in real life loser?

[skiballs]

Can't you get any in real life loser?

Dig deeper , search your feelings , young prequel .

[mud]

The FHFA announced this morning that home prices increased 0.6% in November from October while for the year to November 2012 are up 5.6%. Huh, what?

[Benny Profane]

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-0...ilarity-ensues

[liv2ski]

I want to see him pay the property tax bill on that place. I think the point of the article is, if your willing to bounce around a bit, you can live in an empty foreclosure, free for awhile.

[MontuckyFried]

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-0...ilarity-ensues

Holy crap! That's insane! I'm actually looking into purchasing a BoA foreclosure in my neighborhood. Sounds like I should just squat there instead! Or screw my neighborhood...maybe I should go poach a foreclosure down the road at the Yellowstone Club. Hooray for adverse possession laws!

[Benny Profane]

January 26, 2013
A New Housing Boom? Don’t Count on It
By ROBERT J. SHILLER
WE’RE beginning to hear noises that we’ve reached a major turning point in the housing market — and that, with interest rates so low, this is a rare opportunity to buy. But are such observations on target?

It would be comforting if they were. Yet the unfortunate truth is that the tea leaves don’t clearly suggest any particular path for prices, either up or down.

On the one hand, there were sharp price increases in 2012, with the S.&P./Case-Shiller 20-City Index, which I helped devise, up a total of 9 percent over the six months from March to September. That comes after what was generally a decline in prices for five consecutive years. And while prices dropped very slightly in October, the trend was quite encouraging for the market. (Our November data come out on Tuesday.)

But some of these changes were seasonal. Home prices have tended to rise every midyear and to fall slightly every fall and winter. And for some unknown reason, seasonal effects have become more pronounced since the financial crisis.

After screening out these effects, a number of indicators are up, including data for housing starts and permits as well as the National Association of Home Builders/Wells Fargo Index of traffic of prospective homebuyers, which has made a spectacular rebound since last spring.

What might explain this picture? It’s hard to pin down, because nothing drastically different occurred in the economy from March to September. Yes, there was economic improvement: the unemployment rate, for example, dropped to 7.8 percent from 8.2 percent. But that extended a trend in place since 2009. There was also a decline in foreclosure activity, but for the most part that is also a continuing trend, as reported by RealtyTrac.

And, last spring, along with Karl Case of Wellesley College and Anne Thompson of McGraw-Hill Construction, I conducted a detailed survey of the attitudes of recent home buyers in four American cities, as I discussed here in October. We did not see any evidence of increased optimism.

In short, it is hard to find an exact cause for the rebound in home prices. But that isn’t unusual — we hardly ever know the real causes of major changes in speculative prices. Yet we do know that any short-run increase in inflation-adjusted home prices has been virtually worthless as an indicator of where home prices will be going over the next five or more years.

THERE is a good deal of short-run momentum in home prices — they tend to keep going in the same direction for a year or maybe more. But those prices have generally reverted to the mean fairly quickly, in inflation-corrected terms. The upswing in home prices from 1997 to 2006 — up 86 percent, in real terms — was an anomaly. And that upswing was almost completely reversed by 2012. We certainly can’t rule out another boom. It’s possible that the 20th-century pattern of real home prices, which typically hugged the historical mean, has disappeared. Perhaps people are more speculative in their thinking, after the recent roller-coaster ride, and more prepared psychologically to buy into a bubble. But I wouldn’t put any money on that.

History doesn’t suggest that another big bubble will come so fast. In fact, before the most recent one, the United States had had only one major national home price boom in the last century, when real prices rose a total of 68 percent from 1942 to 1953.

After the traumatic collapse of the last price bubble, Americans seem less sanguine about owning versus renting. According to the Census Bureau, the homeownership rate has been falling, from 69.0 percent in the third quarter of 2006 to 65.5 percent in the third quarter last year.

A study of the causes of these rate movements, by Stuart Gabriel of the University of California, Los Angeles, and Stuart Rosenthal of Syracuse University, concluded that further declines seem likely, but that a forecast would depend “on uncertain forecasts of attitudes toward investing in homeownership as well as changes in credit market and other economic conditions.” (The study was presented at the January meetings of the American Real Estate and Urban Economics Association/American Economic Association.) If the trend continues, it would suggest long-term declines in prices of existing detached single-family homes, because they are costly to manage as rentals.

The housing market has also been subject to new oversight, including that of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which just this month announced new ability-to-repay standards for mortgage lenders. Those standards will make wild lending harder to do.

So it seems that since 2006, our society — including both buyers and lenders — hasn’t become more speculative in its attitudes toward housing. Instead, it has become more wary, and more regulated.

And, of course, economic clouds are still hovering. Slow overall growth continues in the United States, and European financial markets remain vulnerable.Much of our economy, notably housing, is still supported by taxpayer bailouts, which are clearly not a long-term solution. There are also lingering uncertainties about emerging-market economies, as well as the risk that a disturbance in the Middle East could cause an energy crisis.

Most experts are not predicting any big change in home prices. As of December, the Zillow-Pulsenomics Home Price Expectations Survey, which involves more than 100 forecasters, and the S.& P. Case/Shiller Composite Index Futures were both forecasting modest increases for the next half-decade, implying inflation-adjusted price growth of 1 to 2 percent a year.

The bottom line for potential home buyers or sellers is probably this: Don’t do anything dramatic or difficult. There is too much uncertainty to justify any aggressive speculative moves right now. If you have personal reasons for getting into or out of the housing market, go ahead. Otherwise, don’t stay up worrying about home prices any more than you do about stock prices.

I can’t offer any clearer picture, and I don’t see a solid basis for anyone else to do so, either.

Robert J. Shiller is professor of economics and finance at Yale.

[The SnowShow]

Anyone here familiar with Denver commercial real estate? Generally how is it looking? Also, in regards to housing, with all the new projects around town, is that market too saturated for more multi family?

[4matic]

Anyone here familiar with Denver commercial real estate? Generally how is it looking? Also, in regards to housing, with all the new projects around town, is that market too saturated for more multi family?

Home Builders Turn to Rental Apartments

Precisely what some of the nation's home builders are doing. Faced with heavy competition from a hot rental market, they are turning some of their resources to building multi-family, rental apartment buildings.

"We are still woefully short of what's going to be coming in terms of demand," says Buck Horne, a housing analyst at Raymond James. "Lennar is going where the demand is going to be. They're going where they know they can make money."

Lennar has positioned itself with offices in Atlanta, Charlotte, Chicago, Dallas, Denver, Miami, Orange County, San Francisco and Seattle, all markets where apartment demand is high, despite a recovery in the housing market.

http://www.cnbc.com/id/100407898

[cramer]

January 26, 2013
A New Housing Boom? Don’t Count on It
By ROBERT J. SHILLER
WE’RE beginning to hear noises that we’ve reached a major turning point in the housing market — and that, with interest rates so low, this is a rare opportunity to buy. But are such observations on target?

It would be comforting if they were. Yet the unfortunate truth is that the tea leaves don’t clearly suggest any particular path for prices, either up or down.

On the one hand, there were sharp price increases in 2012, with the S.&P./Case-Shiller 20-City Index, which I helped devise, up a total of 9 percent over the six months from March to September. That comes after what was generally a decline in prices for five consecutive years. And while prices dropped very slightly in October, the trend was quite encouraging for the market. (Our November data come out on Tuesday.)

But some of these changes were seasonal. Home prices have tended to rise every midyear and to fall slightly every fall and winter. And for some unknown reason, seasonal effects have become more pronounced since the financial crisis.

After screening out these effects, a number of indicators are up, including data for housing starts and permits as well as the National Association of Home Builders/Wells Fargo Index of traffic of prospective homebuyers, which has made a spectacular rebound since last spring.

What might explain this picture? It’s hard to pin down, because nothing drastically different occurred in the economy from March to September. Yes, there was economic improvement: the unemployment rate, for example, dropped to 7.8 percent from 8.2 percent. But that extended a trend in place since 2009. There was also a decline in foreclosure activity, but for the most part that is also a continuing trend, as reported by RealtyTrac.

And, last spring, along with Karl Case of Wellesley College and Anne Thompson of McGraw-Hill Construction, I conducted a detailed survey of the attitudes of recent home buyers in four American cities, as I discussed here in October. We did not see any evidence of increased optimism.

In short, it is hard to find an exact cause for the rebound in home prices. But that isn’t unusual — we hardly ever know the real causes of major changes in speculative prices. Yet we do know that any short-run increase in inflation-adjusted home prices has been virtually worthless as an indicator of where home prices will be going over the next five or more years.

THERE is a good deal of short-run momentum in home prices — they tend to keep going in the same direction for a year or maybe more. But those prices have generally reverted to the mean fairly quickly, in inflation-corrected terms. The upswing in home prices from 1997 to 2006 — up 86 percent, in real terms — was an anomaly. And that upswing was almost completely reversed by 2012. We certainly can’t rule out another boom. It’s possible that the 20th-century pattern of real home prices, which typically hugged the historical mean, has disappeared. Perhaps people are more speculative in their thinking, after the recent roller-coaster ride, and more prepared psychologically to buy into a bubble. But I wouldn’t put any money on that.

History doesn’t suggest that another big bubble will come so fast. In fact, before the most recent one, the United States had had only one major national home price boom in the last century, when real prices rose a total of 68 percent from 1942 to 1953.

After the traumatic collapse of the last price bubble, Americans seem less sanguine about owning versus renting. According to the Census Bureau, the homeownership rate has been falling, from 69.0 percent in the third quarter of 2006 to 65.5 percent in the third quarter last year.

A study of the causes of these rate movements, by Stuart Gabriel of the University of California, Los Angeles, and Stuart Rosenthal of Syracuse University, concluded that further declines seem likely, but that a forecast would depend “on uncertain forecasts of attitudes toward investing in homeownership as well as changes in credit market and other economic conditions.” (The study was presented at the January meetings of the American Real Estate and Urban Economics Association/American Economic Association.) If the trend continues, it would suggest long-term declines in prices of existing detached single-family homes, because they are costly to manage as rentals.

The housing market has also been subject to new oversight, including that of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which just this month announced new ability-to-repay standards for mortgage lenders. Those standards will make wild lending harder to do.

So it seems that since 2006, our society — including both buyers and lenders — hasn’t become more speculative in its attitudes toward housing. Instead, it has become more wary, and more regulated.

And, of course, economic clouds are still hovering. Slow overall growth continues in the United States, and European financial markets remain vulnerable.Much of our economy, notably housing, is still supported by taxpayer bailouts, which are clearly not a long-term solution. There are also lingering uncertainties about emerging-market economies, as well as the risk that a disturbance in the Middle East could cause an energy crisis.

Most experts are not predicting any big change in home prices. As of December, the Zillow-Pulsenomics Home Price Expectations Survey, which involves more than 100 forecasters, and the S.& P. Case/Shiller Composite Index Futures were both forecasting modest increases for the next half-decade, implying inflation-adjusted price growth of 1 to 2 percent a year.

The bottom line for potential home buyers or sellers is probably this: Don’t do anything dramatic or difficult. There is too much uncertainty to justify any aggressive speculative moves right now. If you have personal reasons for getting into or out of the housing market, go ahead. Otherwise, don’t stay up worrying about home prices any more than you do about stock prices.

I can’t offer any clearer picture, and I don’t see a solid basis for anyone else to do so, either.

Robert J. Shiller is professor of economics and finance at Yale.

So what are you pointing out here Benny? That its not a good time to buy? No shit. You should have bought when inventory was high. Completely agree with the article. Why would you buy now? There is no inventory and unless you are moving out of state or your general population area, why would you sell right now? I guess im not clear on why you would post this. Its pretty much a "no shit" for anyone out there looking to buy or sell. If anyone was looking to buy, they missed the market on buying unless they are fixing up a house. The sellers will have to wait another few years to upgrade. We all know that. lol.

If you are buying or selling a house now you are either leaving or moving to an area. Which i would call a normal market if you owned a house. No doubt it will be a slow growth. Just depends on where you live on how slow or fast it will be.

[Hugh Conway]

cramer's house just went down on zillow

[schuss]

Yeah, I think values are going up in areas that people want to live or are encountering business growth, but shrinking in places where there's still an overage of houses vs. need.

[iceman]

Yeah, I think values are going up in areas that people want to live or are encountering business growth, but shrinking in places where there's still an overage of houses vs. need.

If only we could think of a catchy name for that process.