We never saw a boom or a major crash. We have just been in a downward sprial for 20 years. It was a sharper drop during the recession, but prices aren’t any better. Homes are about the same as the mid 1990s. We are turning into a city of boarded up with homes or rentals.
But, there have been a few bright spots. Two houses on my street did sell this summer. They sold for ~75% of assessed value, but they’ve been on sale off/on (owners just take them off the market after awhile and try again later) for 10+ years. And in the paper, you now see 5-10 houses selling for real each week (I don’t count wills, divorce, foreclosures, etc.) instead of the 1-2 it’s been for a long time.
Prices went lower for awhile in my Northern Virginia (DC suburban) neighborhood, but the houses on my street sell very quickly. We will likely get a good price when we sell ( in the next two years).
There has been a flurry of buying and selling in our neighborhood this summer/year. I think some was pent up trading up, some panic over rising interest rates (that has not come to pass) and some buying in to our district with its soon all newer buildings for K-12. The K-8 is already done so lots of folks moving in with kids that age. Prices were definitely getting pushed up as a result. I do not expect prices to be quite as high for the next year or two since demand has leveled out it seems. We did see a price dip in 2008 but not really a crash like on the coasts and in larger cities.
The couple could not hang on. She had vet school debt. He had job loss during the Crash. 3 young kids. So hard!
An older retired man bought their home (seemed like a bargain) and thought it would be “fun” to fix up an old house.
Oy. He is in over his head. Although he has replaced some of the rotting windows, he has not been buying matching sets of windows. Some are brown. Some are almond. The original windows continue to rot.
This summer, he was moving a ladder and busted out a pane in a second floor window. He put up a piece of plywood & I predict it will be there all winter.
The house needs soooo much work, including fixing his partial fixes.
Who in the world would want to buy our old house, next to his house, in this distressed community?
Our neighborhood never had a decrease—perhaps a slowing in the prices but it’s at > 2x what it was when we purchased our place 30 years ago.
Houses sell rather quickly when they go in the market for most of our island. Most are torn down and an enormous replacement is erected instead of the smaller 60+ year old homes nicely situated in the small 7000 square foot lots.
Homes here in my neck of the woods (greater Seattle area) rarely sell for less than assessed value. If the FAA*G crowd continues to grow locally as projected, our real estate will hold steady (I do not think N has any local presence).
For California, housing in top school districts will not drop much. My Silicon Valley house, bought in 2006, has almost doubled and it was a high price to begin with. On the other hand, a condo bought in 2004 in Richmond (the good part of the city by the harbor) dropped 75% after 2008 and only in the last couple of years has the price gone over what I bought it for.
My San Francisco house, in an area of the city with lots of SF State students, has gone over 5x for when we paid for it back 28 years ago. SF housing has shown signs of slowing down very recently, but never slowed down much during the 2008 bust era.
I remember Phoenix housing getting really hammered in 2008-9. One will have to be very brave to buy into the rapidly falling market.
I don’t think it fully recovered in my neighborhood. Houses are selling fast but the price is as sky high as it used to be. Hard to compare since people update their houses in a big way when they move in. My next door neighbor just sold their house in two weeks for about 50% more than what they paid but they had an addition and major upgrades all over the house. The work lasted 2-4 years. Not sure 50% increase means anything.
I live in the rust belt, and my area has not recovered to pre-crash prices. I am the bookkeeper for my subdivision, and I was purging years of documents yesterday when I came across a listing of “just sold” properties from the early 2000’s. The prices were higher than they are now … very discouraging, but we still paid a lot less than what our house is currently worth (and it has been paid off for years).
@toledo I’ve tried to get that page to load, and it won’t. What are the 10 cities? I’m guessing Austin is one as the 2008 crash barely registered for us.
Between 2008 housing crisis and May of 2018 (I’m sure it’s higher now.)
75% San Francisco
71% Boston
57% Austin (ding ding ding Youdon’tsay was right)
46% DC
45% Dallas
36% LA
35% Houston
32% NYC
26% Philadelphia
23% Atlanta
California, bay area – prices have increased around here, but they seem to be falling back somewhat over the past several months. Zillow shows a steady upward trend for my home from April 2012 through March 2019, then a sharp uptick in May, and now back to the March 2019 level. Trendline has held pretty steady though.
I worry about the newer, younger buyers – the ones coming in with a first home buy at what is a near market high in our neighborhood. I don’t think the market around here is likely to crash (absent some sort of natural disaster— I was jolted awake this morning by an earthquake, a good reminder that stuff happens). But I think that a near-term correction is likely.
Yeah, I’m reading this thread and thinking, That’s not my life at all! Prices flattened out and maybe dropped a bit in 2008, but my house is worth at least four times what I paid for it, maybe five times.
Seattle and area prices are still through the roof, though they have come down a bit from the highs. It’s not something to be happy about if you’re not selling, though, as our property taxes have gone up 60% or more since we moved here (14 years ago).
My kids have moved away and are never coming back… but I still have the same “relocate where?” concern. Kids are on opposite coasts in high-cost areas – (NYC metro/ Seattle) – so no real financial benefit. It would make sense for me financially to move to a lower cost area – but that’s more isolating. For now I’m sitting tight. I don’t think there’s much more upside to the local market, but I’ve finally paid off my house and I think I’ll wait until there’s a compelling reason to move.
I sold an NYC apartment in 1997, bought a house in NJ. I sold the NJ house in 2010 for a bit over double the price I bought it for, and since then the value of house has dropped. The 2 bedroom apartment I sold in NYC back in 1997 is worth 5 times of what I sold it for. Wasn’t such a good trade for me.