Did the housing bubble pop, and I just missed it?

I was listening to the news radio while showering just now, and heard three ads for home builders saying how they had either reduced prices, have excellent values, or include tens of thousands in optional extras for free.

Seems to me the last time I recall such ads they were talking about luxuries and amenities and how they were selling FAST, so come right in...

Anybody else have observations on this matter that might be considered here?

they're being quiet about it, but a relative works in a mortgage company that was having a lot of business when rates were low and they are now reorganizing and thinking of laying off people.
People are not buying as much, it seems.

interest rates started climbing last summer, that put the brakes on. We have home builders in this area offering 6 months free mortgage payments just to get people to buy.

Prices of luxury homes dropping by BIG increments recently.

here forever. Houses in my inner city neighborhood are being snapped up very quickly, guess the convenience I sought 10 years ago is becoming more appreciated every time the price at the gas pump goes up.

I was astonished to find out my own place has appreciated about 50% in the past 3 years, probably due to the increased popularity of short commute neighborhoods.

and the high percentage of them sitting empty. Must be some really nervous bankers around the nation.

The house I sold a month and a half ago is now valued $50,000 less than what it was when I sold it.

because I wanted it to SELL. I was lucky to find an agent with a grasp on reality and good advice, although I did have to play a game of chicken with the buyer. I won, though, and the house sold in under 2 weeks.

I'll pat myself on the back when the first hurricane forms. That house is on a barrier island.

At least it was during BOTH of the last two.

Redstone

but that hissing sound indicates the bubble is starting to lose air, not gain it.

The average length of time a house is staying on the market in central Florida is 4 months. I know that because I had a house on the maket and that market was still being described as "red hot." That tells me that real estate is sitting on the market for even longer, elsewhere.

In the short term, expect to see a whole lot of "free upgrades" from builders eager to reduce their stock of unsold houses and subdivided lots. Also expect to see some people (like me) who price houses slightly below market average to get them sold. However, don't expect to see much price reduction in the short term.

Long term is anyone's guess. Nobody has a clue what will happen to the market a year from now, how high the Fed will have to raise interest rates to make the GOP debt more palatable to the Chinese and others, whether or not we'll hit that critical mass of lost jobs and panic selling. It could be a sudden pop or it could be a long, slow slide.

real estate ads about a month ago. I guess it burst a few months back in CT.

last summer..

The real problem is AFFORDABLE housing in already stable communities.. There is no "big money" in that enterprise, so little of it gets built.. The McMansions are out of reach for MOST people, BUT record low interest made them appear to be within reach, so lots of people grabbed them, only to find that the "variable rate interest" is now eating them alive..

My son has a friend who bought a house and no longer can afford to heat or light 1/2 of it.. They have literally sealed off half their house and are despeartely tring to hold onto it.. They left a rented house that they could afford (barely) to a 2800 sq.ft. house at almost triple the amount they paid as rent..

Modest homes (new ones) are hard to find these days, so lots of people are priced out of the market..It's like wanting to eat out, but every restaurant in town is a 5-star restaurant..That's why so much grazing land/farmland gets bought up..people have to move further and further away to get their starter house..

Our P.O.S. house that we bought in 1981 for $82K is now "worth" over $400K...BUT when we sell we will have to move to a cheaper area, because we cannot afford to buy anything else here.. (It's OK with me anyway, since I have never "loved" California all that much)..:)

my wife is a title searcher in nw connecticut and she was tapering off last quarter 05. she used to get about 40-50 hours of work a week. Shes down to about 4 hours a week average.

-85% Jimmy

When all the houses cost a lot, it's hard to keep a steady year-in, year-out business going.. People who make $30-50K just cannot afford to buy houses they can afford these days, and that's a pretty big chunk of the population..

condos and duplexes and they still have not lowered the prices. I think they all believe the summer season will increase the buyers although some have them have been on the market for a year now. The funny thing is they just keep building. I can not wait until fall to see what happens if they do not sell. The prices at a minimum are 350k to several million.

And has continued ever since. It's been done on the QT, but the process is inexorable. Prices have started to drop in the formerly hot markets, Tole Bros. the biggest new home builder sold off the majority of it's own stock a few months ago, interest rates are rising, with no end in sight.

It hasn't gone *POP* yet, but the air loss is constant and irreversible at this point. I'm betting that this summer we'll see a real downturn in the market. And God help us then, because it's been the hot housing market that has been the only thing propping up this tottering economy for a long while now. When it goes, everything goes.

two legs of the stool.. credit card spending took it in the shorts when minimums went up and variable interest rate went up..and the remedy (bankruptcy) was made harder..

now housing....

a one-legged stool (military spending) is all we'll have soon ..

because I watch the weekly real estate show and started noticing houses staying on the show for weeks at a time, when they'd have had one showing and been gone a year ago.

Are house investors pulling money out and putting it back in the market, the opposite of what they did when Bush came into office?

They know real estate is probably sound in some areas of the country, but stocks will give them better return now that interest rates are rising to the point that people are doing stupid things like interest only mortgages and 40 year mortgages to get into the market.

When lenders start to bend over backwards to attract borrowers, you know something is going on with the market and it aint good.

in Arizona

I check out my home's estimated value (in FL) and a friend's in Glendale, CA. The graph showing change in price over the past year showed a sharp decline in price for both of our homes in early January-and the trend continues.

A year ago real estate agents were calling me practically begging me to sell because they had more people wanting to buy in this area than there were houses. Now I notice that there are quite a few houses around here that have been on the market for at least six months. Must mean something...

I used to get a couple every week trying to get me to list my home...

Interest rates going up and everyone whos gonna refinance probably did twice already.

It used to be one half of a page. People bought "the most house they could afford" and are losing them now.

The paper is the Daily news Journal out of Murfreesboro. The other day had four pages in the classifieds of "trustee's sales" notices.

People cannot keep up with escalating housing prices, when they are unemployed, under employed, and making less, while everything else goes up.

never.

sigh.

People have been sitting on real estate praying to find a buyer. Ive seen houses all along the main street that have been up for sale for a year.
Its over, and even the flippers have stopped buying and selling. The houses have become way overpriced, A 50 thousand dollar property has a selling price of over 100 grand here. And this area is depressed. When they fall back into reality it might pick back up but thatll take a few years at least.

THIS is why they needed to strip bankruptcy protections...

I received my apartment lease renewal info in the mail and realized I've sunk $50K into this apartment. Might as well have flushed the money. I could have bought a house 5 years ago for about 30% less than now. And now I'm worried that it won't hold it's value. (Big sigh.......)