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« This "Nonsensical" Stage | Main | Letters! INDC Gets Letters! » October 04, 2005
Three-Fer
Posted by Bill *** Hubris mocks Hewitt's GOP team politics. Delicious!
The Times has a piece up which could be a real sign of short term and long term financial problems for the US- a real estate crash: "A real estate slowdown that began in a handful of cities this summer has spread to almost every hot housing market in the country, including New York. John properly hedges with "could" cause problems. Certainly. But acting as buffers on any "crash" (I would define crash as a 20%+ reduction in value within one to two quarters) are low inventory compared to supply that still favors sellers in certain growth areas, construction supply shortages and rising costs that will slow new construction and further keep inventory low, a tightening up of loan standards by the FDIC and individual financial institutions (also slowing rampant speculation), the fact that rising energy prices and disaster-related unemployment will put pressure on the Fed to keep interest rates low and this year's counterintuitive behavior of mortgage interest rates, which have remained fairly low in defiance of the Fed's upward pressure. On the flip side, in my opinion, the fairly immutable factors bolstering a flattening or downward market correction in real estate are the widening gap between salaries and home prices and the concomitant gap between mortgage payments and rents. In the short term, this does presage at least a slow-down of growth (which we see in the Times article) due to the fact that upward wages are sticky in a recovering labor market (it's far harder for them to catch up to home values than for home values to flatten or decline), but it does not signal a crash or even significant reduction in value unless the Fed hikes rates at a prematurely accelerated rate. It's in Greenspan's hands. The thing that's lost in much of the real estate bubble talk, including the way the Times article is analyzed by sensationalists (like Drudge, not Cole), is the fact that a slowdown is both inevitable and good for the market, something that increases the odds of locking in gains over the past few years and dilutes the chances of a sudden, double-digit retraction in value. Keenly-interested real estate investors (not pure speculators) should almost herald the news. Or at least not fear it.
Delightful! In case you happen to see this, and because you scampered off into the early-morning gloom in such a dreadful hurry, please accept sincerest apologies, sir! Posted by Bill at October 4, 2005 09:13 AM | TrackBack (4) Trackback PingsTrackBack URL for this entry: CommentsApology accepted. Its just that your lack of posting was really getting to me. So in the midst of my normal stalking and watching you unseen from the shadows routine, I snapped..... Posted by: jmaster at October 4, 2005 09:29 PM This slowing down should, as your said, be a blessing, especially here in Hawaii. Prices have risen so drastically in the past few years it has eaten up the inventory for lower income families who can't afford to pay 700,000 for a 900 square foot home built in 1970 on 3,000 square feet of land. As far as a bubble bursting, people on the mainland might want to keep an eye on european economies as reports have said that some investors from there have purhcasing proeprty in the US because of the exchage rate. Here in hawaii though we don't think the same ballon burst from the 90's will happen due to most of the purcfhaseres here are either local or mainlanders moving here, whereas in the 90's the bubble burst when the Japanese Econmoy went belly up. Just a POV from a mortgage broker in HI Posted by: Big Mac w/ an Egg at October 4, 2005 10:01 PM Hey, you wouldn't happen to know whatever became of the Crazy Lady of M Street? She was a huge hit back when I was living in DC. Posted by: Beck at October 8, 2005 03:23 AM There is a crazy lady on M and 21st, as well as one on M and Wisconsin. I have no idea whether either of these is your crazy lady, but they are crazy, and they are ladies (in the general sense). Posted by: Bill from INDC at October 8, 2005 09:33 AM The Crazy Lady of M Street carries around a bunch of signs which she regularly subjects pedestrians to, along with rants about how the Reagan killers abducted her son. Her usual haunt was near Wisconsin, so yeah, you've probably pegged her. A friend & I had a few really weird conversations with her when she wandered into the (now defunct) Georgetown Cafe at 5 in the morning. Posted by: Beck at October 8, 2005 09:27 PM Posted by: fast loan at November 17, 2006 10:17 PM http://www.ringtones-dir.net/get/ ringtones site free. ringtones site, Free nokia ringtones here, Download ringtones FREE. From website . Posted by: ringtones free at November 20, 2006 01:42 PM Veteran actor William Franklyn, known for voicing the 1960s Schweppes TV adverts, dies aged 81... Posted by: Davin Greene at April 17, 2007 06:34 AM Veteran actor William Franklyn, known for voicing the 1960s Schweppes TV adverts, dies aged 81... Posted by: Davin Greene at April 17, 2007 06:35 AM Veteran actor William Franklyn, known for voicing the 1960s Schweppes TV adverts, dies aged 81... Posted by: Davin Greene at April 17, 2007 06:36 AM |
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