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A Reflection Of The Huge Influx Of Homes Sitting On The Market

A report from Bloomberg on Florida. “A housing slowdown is taking hold in some Florida markets, where a growing share of properties sold only after the seller cut the asking price. Miami leads the nation in both the size and frequency of such deals. In Miami, about 88 percent of single-family home sales in the first quarter came after a reduction, according to an analysis by Knock. The top 10 metropolitan statistical areas also included three other Florida cities: Tampa, Orlando and Jacksonville. Miami’s 7.2 percent average discount was also the biggest in the U.S.”

“Buyers are more reluctant to make discretionary purchases as the market cools, said Knock Chief Executive Officer Sean Black. ‘This seems like an interesting telltale that the market is shifting in favor of buyers,’ Black said. ‘Florida is a popular secondary home destination so it tends to drop faster in a downward market because it’s losing buyers, both domestically and internationally. Everybody needs a primary home. Not everybody needs a second home.'”

From USA Today. “If you’re selling a high-end home, you’ve got company. More pricey houses are up for sale this year, pushing listing prices to record highs. The reason for the jump in list price isn’t necessarily because sellers are overly optimistic. Instead, higher-priced homes tend to come onto the market in the spring, pushing up the overall median, and this year, more of these pricier homes are hitting the sales block.”

“Overall, there were 56,000 more homes for sale in March versus last year, up 4%. The inventory growth largely occurred in the 50 largest U.S. markets mostly on the pricey West Coast West, including San Jose (up 114%), Seattle (up 77%) and San Francisco (up 44%).”

“Listing prices are declining in what were some of the hottest housing markets in the country, says Danielle Hale, chief economist at Realtor.com. For instance, the median asking price in San Jose, California, was $1,100,050 in March – the highest of 500 metro areas, but down 11.6% from a year ago. Median asking prices in Denver and Boulder, Colorado, experienced similar declines. The median asking price declined the most year over year in Lynchburg, Virginia, plunging 37% to $145,000.”

From Realtor.com. “So why are prices rising if the real estate market is supposed to be softening? ‘In a slowing market, it’s not uncommon to have a gap between list prices and sale prices. It can take sellers a little bit of time to catch up to the reality,’ Hale says.”

“The softening in the market began over the summer, when wild price acceleration of the past several years began slowing down. That was due to a rise in inventory as more sellers trying to capitalize on high prices rushed to list their properties—at the same time that many buyers took a pause.”

“In the nation’s most expensive market—Silicon Valley’s San Jose, CA, metropolitan area—prices plummeted 12% in March compared with the previous year. ‘It’s a reflection of the huge influx of homes sitting on the market [in that area],’ says Hale. The San Jose–area listings were up 114% in March over the previous year. ‘There’s more choices for buyers and more competition among sellers.'”

“Prices were also down 3% in San Francisco, Dallas, Houston, and Jacksonville, FL; 2% in Nashville, TN, and Austin, TX; and 1% in Miami and Orlando, FL.”

From Los Altos Online. “You may have heard people reference a ‘buyer’s market’ or a ‘seller’s market.’ Is this a real thing? In a word, yes. Within the past six to nine months, buyer demand has lessened just a bit, and a few more sellers are coming out of the woodwork. I would expect a more balanced buyer’s-seller’s market in the coming years.”

The Orange County Register in California. “Maybe it’s another sign the housing market is cooling down. Maybe it’s because many of the homes, whose former owners are dead, weren’t very desirable to begin with. Whatever the reason, just 13 bidders showed up for the Orange County Public Administrator’s real estate auction on Saturday, March 30.”

“When the bidding was over, just three of the homes sold. Four others failed to get a single bid and will have to be reauctioned in a future sale, officials said. Past property sales drew big turnouts and heated bidding by bargain hunters. Not so in this case.”

“Just one bid was tendered for an 838-square-foot, two-story condo at the Harbor Heights Villas in Huntington Beach. The buyer paid the minimum bid of $351,000 – a deal, perhaps, since a similarly-sized unit nearby is listed for $54,000 more.”

The Wall Street Journal on New York. “A duplex penthouse at the Centrale, an over 800-foot residential skyscraper under construction in Midtown Manhattan, is coming on the market for $39.8 million. The listing comes at a time when the New York luxury market is struggling amid an oversupply of high-end condo inventory.”

“Anna Zarro, sales executive at developer Ceruzzi Properties, said the unit is conservatively priced when compared with the standards of a few years ago, when developers were routinely pricing their penthouses at nearly nine figures. Ms. Zarro said the developer held off on listing the home until the building was nearly complete, in a bid to lure buyers who want to move in quickly.”

“‘In the current market, it’s so important that people get to actually see and touch the product,’ Ms. Zarro said. ‘They don’t want to tie up large deposits for years.'”

From Big Island Now on Hawaii. “The number of homes and lots sold declined in some markets, with sales volume for single-family houses dropping on average 13% (from 584 to 506) and sales volume for vacant land parcels falling an average of 33% (533 to 357) year-over-year.”

“Land sales were a bit more chaotic, with vacant land prices in South Hilo spiking over 55% from the first quarter of 2018 to the first quarter of 2019, while land sales volume plummeted 70% during that same time period. North Kona had a 28.6% drop in sales volume for vacant land parcels, with prices dropping in tandem by about 9.6%.”

“Prices for condos in South Hilo dropped by 13% when compared to the first quarter of 2018, while sales volume plunged by 50% (from 26 to 13 condo units sold) during that same time period. North Kona condos held up better, with prices dipping just 2.4%. South Kohala condo sales and prices both dipped slightly in the first quarter of 2019, with sales volume and prices both dropping 5.1%.”

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    1. Huntington Beach is a very mixed bag.

      Very familiar with the area for the last 60 years.

      What Realtors and the REIC won’t tell you is that HB was covered (and I do mean covered) with oil rigs and pipelines going back to the 1920’s).

      Virtually none of the well locations were documented.

      Ditto for the pipelines crossing the area (not to mention open pit sumps of unrefined oil contained in dirt berms). In the 1960’s you could literally get out of your car and walk up to the sumps.

      The area was a complete oily mess and actually quite dangerous.

      (Of course when you are a 16 year old kid, who cares?)

      This was all, of course, pre-OSHA.

      Today many of those former wells are capped (at least in theory)
      and much of the oily infrastructure bulldozed over. Multi-million
      dollar homes have taken oil’s place.

      Here is a major, major reason I would never buy R/E in most of HB: Earthquakes.

      https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-earthquake-newport-inglewood-rose-canyon-20170309-story.html

      When to the big one hits (and it will), I believe the tangle of subsurface wells, pipes, and sumps will rupture and unrefined oil will seep to the surface.

      I don’t think it impossible that homeowners will find 6 inches of unrefined goo in their living rooms.

      Suddenly those million dollars homes will be worth less than zero, as who would want to own a super fund like toxic waste dump and all the liability? (Unless you want to open up your own personal La Brea tar pit)

      Of course those in the REIC I have spoken with say such a sceanario could never happen because “so much money” was spent cleaning up the area before building started. Of course we can all trust the REIC. [insert laugh track here]

        1. Surfing with free parking along the cliffs “back.in.the.day”, they could as well been called the “Tar Heels”

          1. “…Surfing with free parking along the cliffs…”

            Yep… Favorite spot just north of Golden West Street was called “Five Wells”.. Producing Oil rigs up on the cliff.

        2. “…The mascot of Huntington Beach high school is “The Oilers”….”

          Huntington Beach High School used to be essentially out in the middle of and oil field.

          To give other HBB readers a sense of how HB was in the mid 1960’shere is the opening sequence to the “B” movie “The wild angels film – 1966”

          First scenes filmed in Venice (note the canals!). Probably could buy oneof those shacks for $25K!

          https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WTXY8J-UG2Q

          0:00 Opening scenes (in Venice)

          2:19 Start of Huntington Beach sequence (South Bound on PCH). Just a few hundred yards north and to Peter Fonda’s right was an 18″ outflow pipe that dumped oil soaked hot water directly into the ocean. (Salt water was used to cool that long row of oil rig diesel engines used to pump crude). A favorite surf spot in High School. We used to paddle over to the hot, smelly crude laden water to warm up… Amazing that we didn’t all die from that stuff.

          2:26 Sequence of rows of producing oil rigs. (area immediately behind now covered with expensive homes)

          2:52 Peter Fonda makes a hard left (pre-traffic light!) onto Golden West Street from PCH.

          2:55 “Written by Charles B. Griffith” title. That corner is now replaced by “luxury” condos.

          3:00 Area back off of GoldenWest Street. Note crude oil spilled on ground. Would judge this area to be just off present day GoldenWest Street and Orange Ave. Do a Google earth for this
          intersection and note how things have changed just a bit.

          3:06 “Produced and Directed by Roger Corman”. Note mis-mash of exposed pipe and pumping rigs.

          3:12 Good example of crude oil sump. (this one fenced in but with the gate open!).

          1. “Probably could buy one of those shacks for $25K!”

            Likely half of that, at best. Shack? Indeed. Minimum wage in California was $1.65/hr back then.

    2. What is driving the drop in Lynchburg? Is it the same equity bubble and foreign investment that drove up prices in Miami and New York and London and Israel and Accra, Ghana? I find that hard to believe. Lynchburg isn’t hot on FANG co like CA or Seattle or Denver. So why the drop now? Population aging out and no longer stimulating the economy with social security bux? Overdosing? General emptying out of middle class jobs?

      1. The Lynchburg thing is probably just variance. I grew up very close to Lynchburg and it is a really tiny metro. Around 80,000 people.

  3. ‘Florida is a popular secondary home destination so it tends to drop faster in a downward market because it’s losing buyers, both domestically and internationally.

    If memory serves, Floria and Las Vegas also cratered first and best during Housing Bubble 1.0. This is bringing back fond memories.

    1. No, San Diego was first to rise and first to fall in bubble 1.0 – you can look up old copy of Forbes magazine and other sources. Emergency rate cuts after 9/11 sent SD RE up 20% for 3 years straight, top in high end (Rancho Santa Fe) hit end of 2003. Vegas and Florida were later to the party and their declines were larger in percentage terms because there was so much building going on in those areas. Same thing going on this bubble AFAIK, with the first to rise being the first to fall and supply and demand (like all those mining jobs in Western Australia going away) adding to the equation.

  4. Well I’ve been drafted to do some foreclosure scouting, so I’ll probably be doing fewer posts. The media isn’t going to tell you what’s really happening out there. How could anyone not see there was a bubble in New York and Miami, for example, and that it has popped? You will be hard pressed to find the B word in the thousands of reports on Toronto, Vancouver and all of Australia.

    I noticed last night a poster brought up the old internet morality play of “cheering” a downturn. Besides the futility of what I or anybody else “wants” to happen, we’re all just observers. And as I click through page after page of defaults, did I cause any of this? Or am I simply experienced in sorting out the housing bubble mess?

    1. I think what some of us are “cheering” is a forced return to sanity and affordable housing. Until the long-deferred financial reckoning day lays waste to the Fed’s Everything Bubble, most ‘Muricans will fail to understand the systemic consequences of allowing these Keynesian fraudsters, their oligarch handlers, and captured policymakers, regulators, and enforcers to turn our former productive economy into a rigged speculative casino. A lot of speculators are going to be wiped out, and I will toast their demise quite gleefully, as virtues like prudence and responsibility make a comeback.

      1. Yeah, but what’s the purpose of saying something like that? “Even if you’re right, you guys are meanies!”

        Fudge internet morality theater.

        1. Personally, I think it’s about accountability, not morality. We are not going to have honest markets or sound money until we end the Fed. Though I’ll admit, the thought of Zimbabwe Ben and Yellen the Felon in orange jumpsuits and shackles in front of an honest judge finally answering for their swindles against the 99% would be heartwarming. A Singapore-style caning for every congress critter who voted for TARP wouldn’t go amiss, either.

          1. Personally, I think it’s about accountability, not morality. We are not going to have honest markets or sound money until we end the Fed.

            That would require a huge recession/depression as part of the reset. What politician is going to allow that if they have a choice?

          2. “We are not going to have hone$t market$ or $ound money until we end the Fed.”

            “Fal$e monie$” is certainly a root.cau$e i$$ue, the di$tribution of that “Fal$e monie$” needs an application & a “owner”

            What tangible item on a National / Global $cale can you di$tort by “variou$ scheme$” that in a short amount of time & a $imple $ignature.of.credit$ … increa$es its value by: $10,000 | $50,000 | $100,000 | $250,000 | $500,000| $750,000 | $1,000,000’$ ????

            Nothing on the “$helters.for.Billion$.of.Beings” horizon looks like a new dawn.

        2. I may be partly to blame as I have been trolling Doomed lately! My intent wasn’t to be a bully or anything bad. I was just trying to have some fun. SORRY DOOMED!

          With that said, most folks on this blog have regular jobs and/or are property owners themselves. For example, even though I rent in Silicon Valley, I own a house in Maryland with my parents outright. So if a housing bust drop price by 50%, that would negatively affect me. In addition, I have over 6-figures in RSUs and those get hammered too in a tech bubble bust…and I might even lose my job meaning unvested RSUs = 0.

          Like Ben said, we are merely stating what is happening with a different point of view from the MSM. With just a few thousand readers (Sorry BEN!), I doubt what we post or comment here is causing house prices in Hong Kong, Vancouver, Australia, London, etc. to crater. The common misconception here is the majority of us are low income, bitter renters who missed the free trillions FED giveaway and now want a global meltdown to get back at the rich. Or better yet, socialist pigs that want wealth distribution by all means (i.e., taxes or outright theft). I would say most folks here lean more right than left.

          1. “I would say most folks here lean more right than left.”

            “common $ense” is a.political

            $peculation is free.for.all! ($ocialist?)

          3. “I have been trolling Doomed“.

            I wouldn’t call it trolling, more of a humorous initiation to a newcomer that decided to use the name of what all realtors will be in the near future.

        3. “What’s the purpose of saying something like that?”

          The purpose is to reinforce the myth that boom = good, while bust = bad. Meanwhile, anyone paying attention can see ample evidence to the contrary – this decade’s boom has resulted in huge increases in homelessness and poverty. That must be covered up.

          Good luck on the foreclosure work, Ben. It was great to have the multiple posts a day over the last year, because you painted such a complete picture of the bubble bursting at a crucial time.

          1. “The purpose is to reinforce the myth that boom = good, while bust = bad. ”

            That’s exactly it yet we know the opposite is true.

            The other purpose is to suppress any public discussion of falling housing prices.

            Good luck with that.

          2. ” … because you painted such a complete picture of the bubble bursting at a crucial time. ”

            Again!

            (least we forget Mr. Ben’s original effort$ in the era of HBB l )

          3. “…the myth that boom = good, while bust = bad.”

            Fools get in the habit of spending like there is no tomorrow during the boom times, only to discover they are financially screwed during the bust.

            The financially prudent would do fine in either state of the world, except for the central bank extracting payment to bail out fools.

    2. Personally I would welcome a return of the one post/day model, at lesat for a while. I like the interaction with other posters and it’s hard to keep up with new threads.

      I’ve started to skip most of the foreign market posts, sorry. I think Ben has made his point about a global popping bubble. Altho tbh, if it weren’t for HBB I would never have known about the high price housing in Ghana and Nigeria, of all places. Seems like a lousy place to chase equity. If I had that kind of money, I’d rather buy one of those celebrity mansions in CA, with the 14 toilets.

      1. If I had that kind of money, I’d rather buy one of those celebrity mansions in CA, with the 14 toilets.

        And a Himalayan Salt Room, don’t forget the Himalayan Salt Room!

      2. I’ve started to skip most of the foreign market posts, sorry. I think Ben has made his point about a global popping bubble.

        As interconnected and interdependent as global finance has become, I think reading those foreign market posts is imperative. It’s anyone’s guess what the catalyst is going to be for the next Great Financial Crisis (or rather, the resumption of the 2008 crisis that was deferred with $16 trillion in central bank QE, which only tripled debt and set the stage for a far worse crisis to come), but my money is on defaults by Turkish developers triggering a systemic crisis in the EU banks that finally brings Draghi’s years of extend-and-pretend to a screeching halt. And when the ECB gets overwhelmed, the central bank dominoes are going to fall in rapid succession.

      3. “I’ve started to skip most of the foreign market posts, sorry.”

        You’re perhaps missing the relevance:

        1) International manias have global economic impacts when they implode.

        2) All real estate is not local at the point when a global bubble implodes.

        3) It’s not different here, except we are not leading the unraveling this time; it’s Australia and Canada’s turn.

        1. I understand the importance of international, but I simply couldn’t keep up with all my comments and replies and counter-replies for 3-4 threads each day. So I had to get choosy, and I chose American threads, where I am familiar with the area and can zillow and goolgemap it.

    3. “cheering” a downturn LOLZ.

      May I remind underwater loanowners reading this that I have so much money after “throwing money away on rent” every month that I don’t know where to throw it.

      It’s. Not. That. Complicated.

      Don’t live downtown.
      Don’t live in hipster / gentrifying neighborhood.
      Rent in building built 50 years ago that doesn’t allow pets and offers minimal amenities.

      But you just had to “buy now or be priced out forever” and look what happened. Sad 🙁

        1. Depends on whether the assumption is correct. Prices are set on the margins. It only takes a few debt donkeys to walk away and their foreclosure auction to ruin the comps and pretty soon the majority are underwater. Whether you as an individual are underwater doesn’t really matter.

          1. Bingo. The coming wipeout of fake wealth created by the Fed’s tsunami of printing-press “stimulus” is going to be one for the books.

    4. You can’t affect it. But you most certainly are cheering for a crash. Which is fine, everyone is free to wish for whatever they want. No judgement.

      Personally I want prosperity for myself and my fellow countrymen. But thatt’s just me.

      In either case, there is no evidence of any crash. Unemployment is at 4%, mortgages are at 4% and gdp growth is 2-3%. If that’s a crash, I want nothing but crashes from jere to eternity.

      1. there is no evidence of any crash

        The crash began with the parabolic rise in debt. Debt is not wealth and prosperity, but it can wear the clothes of wealth for a while.

  5. The San Jose–area listings were up 114% in March over the previous year. ‘

    Oh dear. My grasp of supply-and-demand is rather tenuous, seeing as how I’m not a well-paid REIC “analyst,” but I’m thinking that kind of inventory surge means two things: 1) Greedheads better get to sawin’ and slashin’, and 2) The cratering is going to be epic once the FBs start walking away from their underwater shacks as the reverse wealth effect wipes away trillions in fake Yellen Bux valuations off all those shacks and “luxury” apartments.

  6. ‘Florida is a popular secondary home destination so it tends to drop faster in a downward market…’Not everybody needs a second home’

    Nobody needs a second shack Sean. Nobody needs a $3 million shack. And the only reason one would buy is to speculate. Which is why the rush for the exits in so many “hot” markets, at the exact same time.

    1. “Nobody needs a $3 million shack. ” Nor do they need a $25 million shack in Florida! Yes, they can afford $5,000 per month utility bills (FL is VERY HOT and HUMID) and $250,000 property taxes annually but do you think they want to pay that? Just like do you think I want a frozen pipe stuck up my A$$ in the winter? NO! They will only pay that IF they speculate that they can sell the property for millions more than purchased (to offset that costs and make millions on top)! When that is no longer the case, they BAILOUT faster than Bernanke at a Wall St sponsored hooker party! Because the rich don’t become rich by burning money and they certainly don’t stay rich doing just that.

  7. ‘the median asking price in San Jose, California, was $1,100,050 in March – the highest of 500 metro areas, but down 11.6% from a year ago. Median asking prices in Denver and Boulder, Colorado, experienced similar declines’

    Note the absence of media asking the UHS “wa happened to the shortage?”

    1. One of Connecticut’s better known white elephants—rapper 50 Cent’s massive Farmington mansion—has finally traded for $2.9 million, or 84% less than what it first sought 12 years ago, according to people familiar with the deal.

      https://www.wsj.com/articles/50-cent-sells-massive-connecticut-compound-for-84-less-11554152164?mod=trending_now_

      white el·e·phant
      /ˌ(h)wīd ˈeləfənt/
      noun
      noun: white elephant; plural noun: white elephants

      -a possession that is useless or troublesome, especially one that is expensive to maintain or difficult to dispose of.
      “a huge white elephant of a house that needed ten thousand spent on it”

        1. “A former Boulder Realtor on Thursday was again convicted of raping his children’s baby-sitter in 2010. The conviction marked the conclusion of the second trial for Curtis Jay Hilty, after his original conviction was overturned.

          The baby-sitter — who was 20 at the time — told investigators Hilty sexually assaulted her while she was sleeping at his Broomfield home in May of 2010. The woman said she had gone to Hilty’s house to baby sit, and when Hilty arrived home about 10 p.m., he was drunk and both kids were asleep when he got home.”

          http://www.dailycamera.com/broomfield-news/ci_32421689/broomfield-man-again-convicted-raping-childrens-baby-sitter

    1. Brooklyn is headed for an economic and cultural renaissance now that Democratic socialists like AOC are the wave of the future. Corporations and the productive will flock to this thriving hub of the New Green Deal and enlightened collectivism.

      I slay me….

    2. Sold or pending? I’ve been surprised by two pending sales, one in each of two neighborhoods I follow. One pending sale fell out of escrow after two weeks.

    4. How?

      With all the housing FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt) in the MSM, I think the better question is why.

  10. “In the nation’s most expensive market—Silicon Valley’s San Jose, CA, metropolitan area—prices plummeted 12% in March compared with the previous year. ‘It’s a reflection of the huge influx of homes sitting on the market [in that area], ” . . . “Prices were also down 3% in San Francisco, Dallas, Houston, and Jacksonville, FL; 2% in Nashville, TN, and Austin, TX; and 1% in Miami and Orlando, FL.”

    Not so in Santa Barbara. The median 2019 selling price (through February) along the South Coast was approx. 1.4% above the 2018 median, and the median Feb. 2019 selling price was up 2.3% YoY (over the Feb. 2018 median). The number of active listings through February was up from 2018, but by less than 15%.

    Median values (“Zestimates,” for whatever they’re worth) for Santa Barbara city proper and for Montecito recently surpassed their 2005-06 highs. See: Santa Barbara Area Home Values — Medians, Trends and Forecasts.

    Cheers,
    Barb

    2. List price is the new sold price. If they showed the increase of DoM and decrease of sell price, that would look really bad but the wishful greedhead specuvestor “list” (dream) price sure looks good in comparison right!

  15. “Overall, there were 56,000 more homes for sale in March versus last year, up 4%. The inventory growth largely occurred in the 50 largest U.S. markets mostly on the pricey West Coast West, including San Jose (up 114%), Seattle (up 77%) and San Francisco (up 44%).”

    Up 4% overall, but 114% in San Jose?

    That’s quite the regional concentration of inventory growth!

  16. “…The buyer paid the minimum bid of $351,000 – a deal, perhaps, since a similarly-sized unit nearby is listed for $54,000 more. ”

    RIP comps!

  17. Hi All,
    General comment here. No one knows the future, and so don’t get cocky as to outcome of current housing ‘trend change’. However, with that being said, many are calling the economy the ‘everything bubble’. 1) Historically, bubbles always pop and 2) many say there are now bubbles in global housing, stocks, Corp. bonds, and other asset classes. 1 and 2 taken together say that we’re likely in for some nasty financial weather. That’s my view. 2008-9 redux. We’ll likely know 6-12 months from now.

    1. “2008-9 redux.”

      Global real e$tate “True.Believers” of higher multiple$ & valuation$ = “Wor$er”!

      That’$ my “Organic.popcorn” add salt & real butter view.

    2. IMO if everything that composed the “everything bubble” popped at the same time then we will be royaly screwed. But if everything that made up the “everything bubble” were to take its turn popping then we would be less than royally screwed; The total pain would sum up the same but it would be spread out more over time.

      1. Fla$hback, courtesy of Mr. Dimon’$ 2018 Shareholder$ letter:

        The gathering $torm hit with a vengeance.

        “While the collap$e of Lehman in September 2008 was the epicenter of the cri$i$, it was actually far more complex than that — the root$ go back to before 2006. By late 2006, we already saw problems in subprime mortgages, leveraged lending and quantitative investing. With the onset of Basel II, leverage at investment banks (not commercial banks) more than doubled, as did shadow banking (think structured investment vehicles, collateralized debt obligations, money market funds and so on). This was often funded by unsecured, undependable short-term wholesale borrowing. Then the biggest problem of all presented itself: It was not just subprime mortgages that were flawed – but all mortgages. This happened, in hindsight, by bad underwriting, government policy that fueled and fostered inappropriate mortgage lending (higher and higher loan-to-values, less and less cash down, weaker appraisals and insufficient income certification), unscrupulous brokers and cavalier investors. The banks, though not the worst actors in mortgages, joined the party, too. When the world realized that $1 trillion would ultimately be lost in mortgages, panic ensued. There were multiple failures — mortgage brokers, savings and loans (S&L), including Washington Mutual (WaMu) and IndyMac, as well as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (which were the largest financial failures of all time) — culminating in the dramatic failure of Lehman, followed by the extraordinary bailouts of AIG and other major financial institutions. “

    1. If it’s such a great “investment” then you should go all in and buy more used houses.

      My “equity” is in Vanguard and Fidelity accounts, not tied up in a depreciating shack.

    2. You do realize that this was the second article Ben posted at the beginning of this thread, right?

    3. There is lots of data about how price cuts have become more prevalent and bidding wars less common than previously, so a higher median list prices doesn’t necessarily translate to higher sale prices.

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