where will housing market be in 2013/2014?

[Gibson486]

Dumb is still dumb.

Well....in Boston/Cambridge, they either stayed the same or went up. In fact, Cambridge has pretty much matched the price of Boston now. The only prices that are going down in Boston are the properties that hit 7 figures. Other than that, if you have property to sell in Boston, someone will be dumb enough to buy it. Right now....350K buys you a 450 SQ FT condo in Boston proper. In contrast, 5 years ago, that would have sold for 290K. Yeah, it sucks.

 

[BurnItDwn]

extrapolation of current data suggest the housing market will be in or near Sheboygan at that time

Oooh ... I like Sheboygan!

 

[Wyndru]

I refinanced recently, and just found out that our house is still gaining value! Worth way more than when we bought it 3 years ago, NY ftw!

 

[AstroManLuca]

What that is going to do is reach a breaking point where sellers simply can't go any lower and you'll have a huge supply of buyers. THAT's when prices will skyrocket again and it will happen within the next 18 months (if not by next spring/summer) because rates will go up within that time frame.

I don't know, it seems like home buyers in general are not very good judges of the market. Everyone is already saying that it's a buyer's market. People who are able to afford one of these stupid cheap homes now will buy. A huge number of people simply can't afford to buy a home no matter what they do, even with prices and rates as low as they are. Especially since lenders are so much tighter with who they give loans to.

Will the housing market hit its breaking point, as you put it, suddenly enough to actually send prices way up? I doubt it. I think it'll be a really gradual effect that will be further slowed by high unemployment and low wages.

 

[mcmilljb]

It will be back to normal. People are still buying big houses, they're just getting good deals right now. The tax credits pushed up demand and now there is a glut of sellers with much fewer buyers. And as prices keep dropping more buyers are holding out to see "just how low the prices are going to get". What that is going to do is reach a breaking point where sellers simply can't go any lower and you'll have a huge supply of buyers. THAT's when prices will skyrocket again and it will happen within the next 18 months (if not by next spring/summer) because rates will go up within that time frame.

At these prices and rates one would be a fool not to buy the biggest and best house you can reasonably afford because we're never going to see something like this opportunity in our lifetimes.

I do not think we will have a normal like we had before, but I agree about some points. People with patience will keep waiting because they want the best deal and save money to do so. But once people see a house they want at a price they know they can "afford," they are going to buy it. If you keep waiting, you are just going to miss opportunities. However, with the economy stale right now, we are seeing people on the sideline because of the uncertainty of jobs. If we can see progress on jobs, we will see real progress in buying houses. Some people might benefit because they got a house at such a deep discount, but I think that will be the exception to the norm. Plus you will not know until later in the future.

 

[mcmilljb]

Well....in Boston/Cambridge, they either stayed the same or went up. In fact, Cambridge has pretty much matched the price of Boston now. The only prices that are going down in Boston are the properties that hit 7 figures. Other than that, if you have property to sell in Boston, someone will be dumb enough to buy it. Right now....350K buys you a 450 SQ FT condo in Boston proper. In contrast, 5 years ago, that would have sold for 290K. Yeah, it sucks.

And do you think it will sell for 580K in 5 more years? That's what those people are thinking. They expect a doubling of value every 10 years. Maybe in a few booming housing markets, something like that is going to be possible. I just don't think we're going to keep seeing the demand to push prices up like we have in the past.

 

[preslove]

Yeah, NYC, DC, SF, Boston, Miami BEACH & maybe a few more places are doing fine. A ton of the foreclosures are in exurban places, like nevada, arizona, and florida where a lot of Californians and Northeasterners have been moving to to escape the huge prices of their home states. This added an additional price premium because all these immigrants had higher price expectations. This led to a speculative overbuilding that lead to over capacity.

Thing is, the places in the NYC, etc. rose because of the real workings of a very limited supply and a lot of demand for a nice city life and so there hasn't been a price collapse.

 

[Slew Foot]

uh... the places affected worst by this crisis are places like Fort Myers, FL, Las Vegas, the outer reaches of SOCAL, and others that saw HUGE increases in housing prices in the past 10 years. The boomed fueled a ton of speculative housing developments that are now sitting vacant. Those "shitty part(s) of the country where no one wants to live" never saw a major housing boom, anyway, so their housing markets haven't really changed.

Come on out to the Bay Area in CA. Prices still jumping 10-20%/year, and offers pouring in the same day a place gets listed.

Fort Myers? Las Vegas? Boonieville Desert CA? Yup, all shitty places no one really wants to live in.

 

[preslove]

Come on out to the Bay Area in CA. Prices still jumping 10-20%/year, and offers pouring in the same day a place gets listed.

Fort Myers? Las Vegas? Boonieville Desert CA? Yup, all shitty places no one really wants to live in.

Those places have all seen net increases of households. People certainly must want to live there if they have moved there. The point is that housing developers saw this pattern of immigration and then built WAY more houses than needed to absorb this new population.

 

[Gibson486]

And do you think it will sell for 580K in 5 more years? That's what those people are thinking. They expect a doubling of value every 10 years. Maybe in a few booming housing markets, something like that is going to be possible. I just don't think we're going to keep seeing the demand to push prices up like we have in the past.

That's the whole point. They predict the industry is going away from suburbia and going into city. 10 years ago, no one wanted to live in the city. Now everyone wants to live in the city. While I doubt it would double, it will certainly grow or atleast stay where it is. From an industry point of view, if you want to live in the city, you better buy it now because it will not follow the trend of falling prices. Surburbia, on the other hand, yeah, it's gonna fall in price.