Quote from Billbuild:
Convert is a Realtor. Simple as that.
Or if not a realtor at least he is an extremely vested "long". My take would be he owns a home and that is most, if not all, his net worth. Probably re-fied a few times up to his eyeballs.
Quote from Covertibility:
Your pretty desperate. You outta check out the yield chart during the 80's. Double digit rates and get this, people were still buying homes!
I guess the Weimar Germany fans are upset that "core personal consumption expenditures inflation, excluding food and energy, the Federal Reserve's preferred measure of inflation, was unchanged at a 0.7 per cent rate in the quarter - the lowest reading since the 1960s."
Rates fall faster than they rise. It'll take years for rates to get back to any sort of level that threatens those on fixed income.
Convert, in my area real estate had a very nice run up to about 1979 and then just finally choked and died. Fell flat on it's face as President Carter finished things off with extremely high interest rates. Then about 1984 as interest rates slowly had come down real estate picked it's self up and slowly over the next few years built up in volume to the next peak in 1989-90. The important thing is that although interest rates were double digit in most of the 80's, they still had come way down from their peaks from the Carter years so deals penciled out. Real estate pricing had been so beaten down under Carter that later on it started to move again when it reached low double digit rates. Then and now, it really is the monthly payment and it must pencil out!
I remember it well because I bought my first home in 1984 and the timing was just by luck. I still own that POS as a rental.
The readings of low inflation are bunk, plain and simple. Anyone who has bought gasoline, plywood, prescription drugs, movie tickets, purchased insurance, hired a plumber, or paid for car repair of late can tell you the govt stats are a big f--ing lie! Of course the govt excludes all but the most benign products for their stats...and when even that fails I think they just lie through their teeth and revise the numbers later! Greenspan has created a real situation for himself with these low rates. He wanted to stimulate the economy and create jobs, but those indicators are lackluster at best. He has stimulated the CRB and commodity inflation though! Holy smokes!
Greenspan must raise interest rates, if he does not we will have in short order $100 oil, $50 dollar a sheet plywood, and a plumber will be at least $100 an hour. Starter homes in Los Angeles and Boston will be a cool million. It is time to choke off the monster.
Real estate is
'so' priced for perfection with these extremely low interest rates that Greenspan has pushed like crack. With much of any an increase the affordability goes right out the window. It will not pencil out, even if people want/need a house they will not buy for simply then will not be able to until prices come down. Real estate is sewing the seeds of it's destruction as we speak. It will be sewing the seeds of it's renewal as prices correct in the coming years.
It will take some time, but real estate will at first stumble, first with conflicting news and mixed results (like now), and then flat out die. It will come to pass.
A sample of how Realtors and the press lie...
http://piggington.com/
"In the spin department, a couple smart readers have written in to point out the San Diego Union Tribune's latest trick: now that prices have begun to go down month-to-month, the year-over-year appreciation has become the big headline figure. I don't know what's more appalling: the fact that the people at the UT are so obviously shilling for the real estate industry, or the fact that they are so inept at it."