NOYB wrote:
"Shortwave Sportfishing" wrote in message
...
On Sun, 18 Sep 2005 17:42:30 GMT, "NOYB" wrote:

When home prices hit the outer stratosphere, the number of potential
buyers
admittedly shrinks. But the Naples luxury market is still in boom mode,
local agents say, despite forecasts of a housing bubble that some predict
eventually must burst.

A slowdown?

You will get your turn and sooner than later.

It's already starting up here in NE.

I figure that once the NE slows, we'll soon follow. They'll be a slowdown,
but never a correction. There are too many baby boomers looking to retire
down here.

If the typical house in Naples becomes worth 5-7 times as much as a
typical house is worth anywhere else in the country, (and that is what
you seem to predict), those boomers will "look to retire" where it
won't take a nest egg of
$4-5mm just to buy a retirement cottage, and more importantly, where
taxes won't be taking a $30,000/year bite out of pension and social
security earnings.

It's a screw job. You live in a house that is valued at
$XXX,XXX,XXX.00, and you are free to sell it, but if you do and you
have no desire to start a new life in another portion of the country or
move into a beater you will be compelled to spend $XXX,XXX,XXX.00
*plus* to replace it. Put any value you want on the same property, $1
or a $100mm, and as long as you are *consuming*
the property every month by parking your butt in it that money isn't
really working for you. Meanwhile, the county tax collector comes along
and says, "Good news, NOYB, your house has doubled in value in the last
few years and so has the assessment. Here's your walloping bill for the
privilege of consuming a 7-figure house every month."

There's a reason that many of the more conservative (there's an
adjective you'll like) financial institutions *do not include* the
value of a personal residence when calculating net worth.

Did you check out "Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of
Crowds"?
(I particularly like the chapter on the Dutch tulip bulb boom and
bust).