Wonkette
Thanks to evil poor people who were kindly given expensive mortgages they couldn’t afford, U.S. home prices continue to plunge, and that means the financial apocalypse will continue, because every time another home loan defaults, another weird mortgage-based security is worth less, and there are 10,000 new foreclosures every day in the Country of Dreams.
The new Case-Shiller Index numbers are out and they show July was another rancid month, with home prices now down 16.3% from last July and 19.5% down from two years ago.
But it is much worse in some places! Las Vegas is down 30% since the peak. When it all shakes down, more than half of all homeowners will owe more on their mortgage than their houses are worth. the WSJ reports:
“There are signs of a slow down in the rate of decline across the metro areas, but no evidence of a bottom,” David M. Blitzer, chairman of Standard & Poor’s index committee, said in a statement.
Home prices plunge record 16.3 percent in July: S&P [Reuters]
Come to Raleigh-Durham, where the homes remain woefully overpriced!
I’d hit that.
I can haz cheep howsing?!?
Hahaha… they can’t find a bottom in Vegas… I bet they’re not looking very hard…
So what you’re saying is that when I bought my home for $250k 5 years ago, and then three years later the house across the street sold for $425k, it wasn’t really wort that much? You don’t say!
Come to Upstate NY where home prices never went up, and thus never crashed.
Credit cards are paid, and student loans will soon be gone… hey, at this rate, I’m not going to settle for just buying some house that’s too big for me with the left over cash… I’m gonna buy an entire neighborhood in Detroit! You all may call me a slumlord, but I’m good to my peons.
Thank god I bought a fixer upper with the floor space of a 70’s era cadillac. We’d have to break down into Mad Max world before I go upside down on this little turd.
I keep getting flyers from real estate agents “hey, look! It’s a great time to buy!” Well, yes, it is, lots of wonderful houses around here for bargain prices. But, see, dear real estate agents, we cannot sell our condo, or get a mortgage even with good credit, so what do you suggest we do? Maybe we can bake some nice cookies for the down payment?
Standard and Poor’s? Is that a pizza place?
grendel:
Plus you keep supply down with all those house fires in Tonawanda and Cheektawoga.
Meanwhile, you can buy a 2500 sq. ft. home in Wisconsin on a couple acres of land for about $120k.
All that and cheap beer too. You live in city, why?
every time another home loan defaults a muslim baby terrorist is born
ManchuCandidate: Well, that’s Buffalo, and I wouldn’t recommend living there…
The future is tipis and jerky, folks.
Treehugger.com had “ten things to do during the financial meltdown” and “move to Buffalo was third or fourth.
@mbprice: sounds like a steakhouse to me
you guys (an i mean guys n’ dolls both) know all this, but here’s a mornin review jess to git the head blood flowin — them weird mortgage-based securities is worth whuddever the market will bear, an if the market finds them unbearable, then they’re worthless, or worth less than worthless if through the magick o’creative accountin they have acquired a negative, even reprehensible value… hang on, i think i jess blew a fuse… more coffee…
Serolf Divad: Where the hell are you getting these so-called $250K houses? I’m still waiting for home prices to plummet so I can afford a 20 year old dog house on a highway median.
grendel:
Tim Russert hater
mbprice: It’s a subsidiary of “Gotcha Pizza”.
Clearly, in times of fiscal crisis, it is only the moderate and prudent Republicans who can lead the country.
The financially illiterate Democrats would only leave the economy in a mess.
The smart money is in tents. At this point, who would go against Big Tent?
Serolf Divad: Sigh…Some schmuck did a tear down on my street, built a Mcmansion, and sold it for $500,000. I almost feel sorry for the idiot that paid that kind of money to live 2 doors down from me…almost.
surfacenoise76: The triangle should do ok, but the problems over in Charlotte may get y’all as well.
Moving to Buffalo should only be considered as a dangerous contingency plan after all of the dumpsters and cardboard boxes in your town are occupied by hobos, and after you’ve tried getting the hobos to move out of them, and after you’ve unsuccesfully tried to sleep on the bare sidewalk. If you do move to Buffalo after that, I wouldn’t recommend getting interested in local sports - it’s nothing but a long, twisted history of shame and heartbreak, like a decades-long heroin dependency
Vewol Mevemont: Yeah, everything is relative. Townhouses (not single famly homes) in my area that were going for $1.5M two years ago are now in the $800K range. That is a big drop for the people who refied and pulled $ out based on the $1.5M “value”, and these are the houses real estate agents are calling “bargains”.
Sussemilch: well, the 8-month winters are kinda rough. otoh, lotsa good bars.
I will be happy to buy a house for cash from any seller. I have a downpayment of 70% in highly valuable pine cones. (They do not lose their value, have 1,001 uses and are prized among the Squirrel People.) This is the new economy.
Geez. Thankfully, I bought my modest home zillions of years ago before the invention of fire, so anything higher than the price of a ton of rocks and a few sticks is WIN for me.
mattbolt: Why do you hate sainted Mayor Frank Sedita?
Canuckledragger:
Big Laminated Cardboard Boxes, that’s who!
ManchuCandidate: BREAKING NEWS: Consolidated Bathurst posts big gains.
mattbolt: Hey, you’re wrong there…. The Bills are kicking ass this year. But, you can be a Bills fan and live in a non-wasteland like Rochester (which has its problems, but at least it doesn’t look like a blasted meth-scape… or like Wasilla, basically).
Why is the Dow acting like an elusive date? FIRST everything is going horribly and she warns you she’s gone (777) points, and then you have some make up sex and the next morning she’s coming back on board with you (up 260 so far this morning). I don’t get this girl. What the hell does she want from me? ALL I WANT IS A STEADY RELATIONSHIP.
dano:
Yeah, but in my case it wasn’t even a new home. It was basically the same house I was living in. Built at the same time 10 years earlier by the same builder. Sure it probably had a few more amenities, but not $180,000 worth. I was lucky to get in just before things went nuts around here. I recall the next summer seeing “For Sale” signs EVERYWHERE. And the summer after that it was worse. And the following summer my neighbors sold their home (divorce) and the buyers got into a bidding war and paid $7000 over asking! Shit was completely off the wall.
grendel: Hey- hubby and I are thinking of moving upstate to retire. How’s the Victor/ Rochester area?
…I’m suspecting that the cases of Home Arson will spike(if it hasn’t already).
irisheyes: It’s pretty good… Victor is actually experiencing a bit of a boom in house prices. If you’re coming up here for retirement and don’t need to find a high-paying stable job, then you should be set. Cost of living is pretty low, except for the NY state tax…. If you’re selling a house almost anywhere else in an urban market, you’ll be able to seriously upgrade up here. Unfortunately it is a bit redder than downstate, but there’s still plenty of commies like me.
As a former Buffalo resident, I’m offended by anyone claiming that moving to Buffalo might possibly be a good idea for anyone.
ManchuCandidate: I recently found out that the house I lived in South Buffalo when I was in high school — which was a actually a really nice 1940s duplex w/three bedrooms on each floor, gorgeous hardwood floors, nice architectural details, etc. — burned down. The neighborhood as a whole had gone from “striving working-class Catholic” to “sketchy white trash with dollar stores the only retail” over the past 15 years, so I assume it was a result of either insurance fraud or a meth lab accident.
Rush: The people who live in Buffalo don’t recommend Buffalo.
Where is our Global War on Bankers, I ask ya!
Josh Fruhlinger:
Since I became an adult (legally) I’ve always been dismayed at the desolation. My mom tells me that Buff and Toronto were once close in terms of population and even finances until the early 70s (we had relatives living in Buff.)
You’re probably right, but those fires are a staple of Buffalo news (I get Buffalo stations from my Canada City Cable provider. Irv Weinstein forever!)
dano: hee! My folks NoVa neighborhood was hit bad by this phenomenon in the late nineties/early 2000s… three houses that surround my folks’ tiny 1930s Cape Cod were bulldozed, clearcut, and filled with McMansiony Goodness. One sold for $800K, one for $1mil, and one for $1.5.
And for all that money? They get to live next to the most overgrown acre and a third in all of NoVa, next to my mom’s laundry line filled with her giant underpants (hanging clothes out to dry saves on energy AND annoys uptight neighbors), next to my dad’s scraggly-ass vegetable garden and compost heap, with their front-yard dumpster and three inoperable cars in the front lawn. PLUS we set off fireworks at any holiday, grill outside in every season (Dad just puts his flack jacket and boots on if it’s snowing), AND my dad has been known to walk around the (unfenced) backyard in his boxers if the mood strikes - just because.
Most of this behavior was added after the assholes next door moved in, as my father now embraces having become the “White Trash King” of our block for the sheer sport of it.
So we (miraculously) sold our Queens co-op this spring for over 100% profit, since we bought in 2000 just before everything exploded. And hubby said let’s bank the money and rent for a while, things look shaky, and I cried and said “but I want a HOOOOUUUUSSSE” but he stood firm. So now we’ve got all the money in FDIC insured accounts and almost no debt. Question: how many blow jobs do I owe hubby?
Serolf Divad: My neighborhood is/was in the process of being taken over by the idle rich. A longstanding apartment complex on the next block was razed to build houses that start at $700,000. As of now, not a single home has been completed ( two are 80% done) and none sold as far as I know. They did build an enormous privacy wall around the whole thing though. At least I don’t have to look at it when I ride my bike.
dano: Wow, they tore down an apartment complex to build single family houses? Never heard of that one before. Gives a whole new meaning to “upside down in housing”.
My own story is the old boring “bought a much cheaper house than I could afford with 50% down and a dinky monthly payment and watched my equity get ridiculous in 5 years” tale. No drama here. Be interesting to see how far down the equity goes in the next few years. I’ve got some cash and I’m thinking about investing in a small apartment building or a rental 4-plex. Should be some good ops coming up, if I can get a loan.
Is this now the Real Estate Prices blog? Come on, people, how about some snark? You could be this bored at a suburban cocktail party.
/dick joke
CorkPopper: One a day for life
mbprice: Stoddard and Pours.
I grew up in Niagara Falls as a kid and I took my wife (who is Australian) to visit my family in Buffalo and we toured the area.
Holy shit, main street in Buffalo reminded me of a smaller version of Canal Street in New Orleans post Katrina. Just about every business was boarded up and the grocery store that closed 20 years ago still had its sign up.
But Buff has good peeps and some natural beauty close by, thankfully. GO BILLS!!
The real estate market was tough in my area before the mortgage bubble burst because of layoffs in the auto industry. I don’t even want to know how much my house is worth today.
But, on a positive note: gas is less than $3 per gallon!