On Fri, 28 Mar 2008 06:21:35 -0400, "Eisboch" wrote:


"Short Wave Sportfishing" wrote in message
news

Ah - I understand now. Let me go look.

Hmmm - that's interesting. The house peaked about 4 months ago at
$250K and it's now $224K which I expected, but as I remember it it was
$265 back then.

You know what they may have done is readjust the historical data to
reflect actual market conditions at that time. To tell the truth,
that house was never worth $250K. It does have a high assessment
because it's an unusual house lot - the apartments are huge - the
total house is like 2,780 square feet.

The house we're living in now peaked at $450K - it's now down about
$385K. - which is kind of bogus - the land is worth more than the
house. :)

Interesting times - interesting times.

It is. I also agree, I think Zillow had everything overvalued for several
years.
No big deal. Eventually this whole mess will straighten itself out, along
with inflation, consumer prices and income.

I've always viewed inflation as a necessary evil. Looking out ten
years, inflation actually is your friend in terms of "real" dollars -
meaning dollars now, not compared to then. Yeah, you could buy a
gallon of gas for .05¢ in 1930, but so what - you don't live in 1930.

The oil bubble will burst, prices will readjust, inflation will take
care of itself in the long run.

The result will be an overall "correction" for the phony valuations over the
last couple of years and the economy will stabilize.

That's exactly what has to happen. You should reasonably expect a
decent return over time on real estate, but it's like anything else -
you get bubbles, they correct and six to eight months (sometimes up to
a year) later you pretty much reset values and the market is in
balance. On average, real estate will return 50% gain over 15 years -
that's historical data and it's pretty much fact. Even with this
recent correction, we've made decent money gaining on average 8% a
year on real value and on income, heh - apartments ain't cheap.
Everybody has to live somewhere 'ya know? :)

I read a really interesting piece of data the other day that was sent
to me by somebody who is heavily invested in REITs. One REIT that
he's involved with reevaluated their holdings on a cyclical basis
starting at year one and moving forward against historical data
nationally. What they found was very interesting.

Apparently there is a seventeen year cycle - give or take six months
in aggregate - and it's an exact match to previous housing cycles and
matches up to the last data point which was six months ago. In
effect, the bottom was coming and it's bottom plateau is now.

What was particularly interesting from an economic standpoint was that
every decline in value was precipated by differing economic conditions
in every cycle.

I think eventually, the realisation by banks and mortgage companies
that if people can pay $900 to $1,200 a month for an apartment, they
can afford to pay the same for a home. 30 year fixed mortgages for
average value homes are exactly in that ball park. Given decent
credit, the markets will begin to pick up again.

I hope.

No hope needed - it's basic economics. It's a shake out which is
good.

When you evaluate data sets like Case-Shiller, nationally the decline
is only 3% on average. There are hot spots where it's higher and hot
spots where it's lower, but on average, that's not so bad.

Which means it's not as bad as media would make you think.