Thursday, February 14, 2008

BubbleSphere Roundup

A decade of January Sales in Northern Virginia at Northern Virginia Housing Bubble Fallout. Great blog!

Calculated Risk reports that Countrywide's Delinquencies Rise. Amazing economic blog with much info on the housing market. And NAR: Housing Sales Bust is Everywhere. Its bubblicious.

Three's Company at BubbleTracking. That is 3 realtors, 3 foreclosure, 1 small suburban culdesac.

Lower prices in Detroit. Sales Rebounding. But, for how long?

4 comments:

  1. How long until you post the Forbes article showing foreclosure increases escalating 500% in Bethesda?

    ReplyDelete
  2. Don't you have anything to say about the most recent NVAR price stats? I can't believe (or perhaps I've missed) that you haven't commented on the fact that prices have fallen so much even in their stats. Usually, they are able to spin things to make the market seem ok, but this time, they present the stats without comments. Since they're so bad?

    ReplyDelete
  3. "great blog"

    No joke, that is where we all moved after this blog died.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Hello,

    This is "A Redskins Fan" checking in. It has been a long time since I posted. This is still a great blog, but I just haven't had time.

    It is amazing how things have turned out after all these years. A few years ago, this blog was filled with people attacking "bubbleheads" and saying that there was no bubble. Then, as the first cracks in the dam appeared, they started saying it wasn't in their neighborhoods.

    Now we have national and international leaders having emergency meetings to try to deal with the problem. The end result of these meetings seems to be a public statement basically warning that a whupping is a-coming.

    Even some other bubble-believers on this blog used to deride my prediction of a 40-60% real price decline from 2005 prices. However, in NOMINAL terms, these price declines are already happening in parts of NoVa. If you look at the "Old Housing Tracker" site, which has asking price data back to 2005, you can see 20% nominal declines for the entire DC area. In real terms, I would guess it is close to 25-30% by now, and I would guess that there is farther to go. (I think asking prices are more indicative of the market than selling prices, as so few homes are selling).

    The unwinding process is just underway, though. There are still many in denial, and the worst area for denial seems to be inner-Beltway Montgomery County. For example, I just saw a townhouse here near downtown Silver Spring for sale for $725,000. LOL. There's a price that likely needs to be cut in half, and even then, it would be just a an opening ask that would need a much lower bid.

    Actually, the denial in Silver Spring extends beyond residential to commercial as well. We have all these new stores, some of which are nice, but now all the landlords think the area is Bethesda or Georgetown. I liked the area as a middle-class area, but if you think I will pay upper-class prices for middle-class amenities, you are wrong. Many of the stores are going out of business (as they were upper class stores in an area that couldn't support them), and then the storefronts just sit empty because the idiot landlord thinks he owns a commercial property in Georgetown, and is demanding lease rates like that.

    It will be interesting to see how this continues to play out.

    A Redskins fan

    ReplyDelete