<p>Some sober thoughts. Get your Florida condos now. Next year will be too late.</p>
<p>[Real</a> Estate | Dark cloud of falling home equity may not hover over you | Seattle Times Newspaper](<a href=“http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/realestate/2004476730_harney15.html]Real”>http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/realestate/2004476730_harney15.html)</p>
<p>Well crud, we’ll never be able to afford to move back to Seattle…</p>
<p>My mom sells condos in Florida! 
(And all the way from California, to boot.)</p>
<p>But she sells investment real estate, so it’s not quite the same.</p>
<p>The press has been running wild with talk of the real estate crash, but the truth is that most financially responsible homeowners really have not, and will not, notice that anything has gone amiss. Most (although not all) of those getting screwed at the moment are only feeling the impact of what were previously very poor financial decisions on their part (buying too much house, stretching their finances too thin, signing up for silly mortgage deals without finding out what they’re getting into, speculating in the market without a good plan B…). </p>
<p>And of course a ‘bad’ real estate market is only a relative term… it’s bad for some but fantastic for others (if you’re buying up property that is). </p>
<p>It’s true that now is probably not the best time to be selling your house if you’re wanting top dollar for it, but on the grand scheme of things if you’ve been playing your cards smart and making informed financial decisions you’re still probably doing just fine financially. </p>
<p>However, if you bought some silly McMansion that you couldn’t really afford on the false hopes that you’d sell it in a few years at a big profit (but are now looking at massive negative equity) well then you made a dumb decision and now must pay the price. For most everyone else, the market goes up, the market goes down, but in the long run the market almost always goes up a decent amount. </p>
<p>As the old saying goes… don’t wait to buy real estate… buy real estate and wait.</p>
<p>Uh, tell that to my parents. We live in Florida, and several builders are having giant layoffs, and my mom has had to switch her job (regional VP of sales and marketing) twice in the past year. My dad is out of a job (construction manager). And our home, originally bought at $300k, peaked at $600k before plummeting to $450k, and even at that price we are unable to sell because of the cheap new homes being built.</p>
<p>
Yeah some construction and housing jobs are hurting, but I think it was generally in reference to homeowners in general.</p>
<p>As for your home, you’re still up $150k (50%) so that’s nothing to cry about. You shouldn’t look at how much it dropped from it’s peak but how much it’s up from the purchase price. </p>
<p>You at least made a smart decision by holding onto your home. A lot of people were speculating and would have sold at $600k, bought a home for $1 million that’s now worth $700k (so they lost $300k while you ‘made’ $150k).</p>
<p>well the real estate slow down- is at least slowing the condos in their tracks-the prospective buyers can’t sell their homes.
[Business</a> & Technology | Bellevue condo project, European Tower, put on hold | Seattle Times Newspaper](<a href=“http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2004430820_european22.html?syndication=rss]Business”>http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2004430820_european22.html?syndication=rss)</p>
<p>and they’re not the only ones. Projects are stalled all over the area. ( but makes for fewer dump trucks on the roads 
)</p>
<p>I feel badly for those in construction who are losing their livelihoods over this. But it’s hard to propose a “fix” when the numbers are so uneven nationwide. In my wife’s hometown the mean price of a home still hovers around $45,000. In my town homes (on one-plus acre lots) range from $125,000 to six million. And when I refinanced recently the bank said “we’ll lend you 70% of what the house was worth when you bought it twenty years ago.” So how exactly does one get a realistic picture?</p>
<p>I think the lending market is still coming to terms with how big they screwed up and it will take some time before they feel comfortable again. Until then loans will be very conservatively underwritten.</p>
<p>Right, barrons, I’m a commercial real estate lawyer and business is really down because of that…perfectly dull vanilla deals that cash flow are being turned down.</p>
<p>I think it’s the banks which are causing much of the ‘crash’ at the moment. They royally screwed up and went from giving massive loans to folks that realistically shouldn’t of even qualified for a decent credit card to now guarding their money like Fort Knox. </p>
<p>From what I’m hearing, even with good credit and 20% down people are still getting put through extensive checks and paperwork whereas such ‘prime’ consumers would have previously been given loans after probably just a casual credit check. Less than great credit, don’t have at least 10% (but maybe even 15 or 20%) down… forget it. </p>
<p>That’s taking a lot of buyers out of the market thus furthering the downwards spiral. </p>
<p>For first time buyers who can get a loan then it’s a fantastic time to be buying, but for a lot of others things are quite ugly out there. </p>
<p>So long as you always accept that real estate is a long term game, then all will be fine… but some folks that were speculating (or should have never been given a loan to begin with) got screwed big time.</p>
<p>“but some folks that were speculating (or should have never been given a loan to begin with) got screwed big time.”</p>
<p>I prefer to think they screwed themselves. The lenders just gave them the means.</p>
<p>^^^ Yes, agreed!</p>
<p>I didn’t see anywhere in the article that said the housing market has bottomed out, though everyone who makes money on RE sales continue to claim that.</p>
<p>I have stock in “one of those lenders”
S student loan is “one of those lenders”
Our PLUS is with “one of those lenders”
My checking account is with “one of those lenders”
My savings account is with another “one of those lenders”
My IRA has multitude of “one of those lenders”
My 401k is with "one of those lenders
My 401k has innumberable “one of those lenders”
My credit cards is with several of “one of those lenders”
S Canadian bank is “one of those lenders”
S Indian bank account is with “one of those lenders”
My brokerage account is owned by “one of those lenders”
S and our Student Loans are serviced by “one of those lenders”.
We pay our property taxes to “one of those lenders”
My rollover annuities is “one of those lenders”
My auto, home, and life insurance is “one of those lenders”</p>
<p>And we don’t have a mortgage. And we don’t have a car loan, or do we have debt. So how come I’m hurting?</p>
<p>rocketman, you missed a step in your account for erhswimming…
people bought a home for $1 million that is now worth $700K and they took out a second mortgage to buy a bunch of toys so they now owe $1.1 on a home that is worth $700K</p>
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<p>We bought our first home in 1992 when California real estate was in the midst of a different crash. We had to put 10% down and take private mortgage insurance and got a loan for $170k by the skin of our teeth. H and I were about 30-years-old with two small kids. I don’t see the big deal with the above. Seems like the banks are just going back to normal lending practices, not drastically conservative practices (except relative to the craziness of the past few years).</p>
<p>BTW, we paid that PMI monthly for 10 years until we moved to the house we are in now. I don’t hear much about PMI anymore.</p>
<p>ebee, good point about the toys, and this is why I don’t feel sympathy for the vast majority of folks who are upside down or are walking away. They should have to sell their toys back, too. (Wonder how that works with expensive vacations they took).</p>
<p>What the article said is that in many areas they never had the huge boom and are not in a bust either. These markets are relatively stable.</p>
<p>In the beginning, I thought the all this talk about mortgage industry crisis was pure baloney, since I believed that everyone had to undergo as much scrutiny as we did with our two house purchases. The paperwork the lender required from us was just short of a physical fitness exam (bank and brokerage statements, useless stock option paperwork, 401(k) reports, car titles, insurance policy, etc.). I was irritated back then faxing them blank pages from my 401(k) statement, but now I think it was smart of the lender to do this.</p>