Friday, April 24, 2009

Housing expert: Upturn this year?

Chip Case, economist from Wellesley University and a creator of the Case-Shiller Housing Index:
"I think you're going to see things turn this year. In the housing market. Commercial real estate is going to dominate the press in the next few months. [Because of banking issues.] But the story's in residential ... "

Case noted, wryly that his long-time Red Sox fandom proves he's an optimist.

"Florida's not going to die. Arizona is sick but it's not gonna die." His point is that people still want to live in warm areas.

"Florida and California alone are one-third of the [housing and real estate] value in the United States. California alone is a quarter of it."

(This is at a conference on "The Next City" in Cambridge, Mass., sponsored by the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, the Nieman Foundation and Harvard's Graduate School of Design.)

18 comments:

Anonymous said...

"A liberal is someone who feels a great debt to his fellow man, which debt he proposes to pay off with your money" G. Gordon Liddy

Anonymous said...
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Anonymous said...

I love city life, but don't like being forced with a gun to pay for BS programs.

Anonymous said...
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Anonymous said...

"I've never had an original idea in my entire life. I just read books of quotes and repeat them. What, me worry about originality?" - Alfred E. Neuman in Mad Magazine

consultant said...

As long as wire fraud and conspiracy to commit fraud are not treated as crimes, housing will not, I repeat, will not come back.

Oh yeah, homes will be bought and sold, but not anywhere on the scale of the flip this and that Ponzi schemes of the last few years.

consultant said...

You want to return housing to normal? Maybe bring a degree of normality (stability) to neighborhoods? Make mortgage lenders keep their loans for a minimum of 10 years. In other words, outlaw securitizing loans.

All the speculation goes out the window.

Oh, I forgot. How are the rich (mostly modern pirates) going to continue to screw working people and the rest of the world?

Anonymous said...

During the heady days of house flipping, some yo-yos bought a 35-year-old 2,300 square-foot split level in my SouthPark-area 'hood for about the then going price of $350,000, "as was". They put in wood floors, granite countertops and the usual unimaginative "improvements". Then they tried to sell it for $603,000, figuring there must be an idiot somewhere who would pay that much.

It's still on the market two years later. I think the latest price is about $375,000. Ha, Ha, Ha you greedy bastards.

The nice thing about this economy is that it will make an honest man or woman out of many of our ethically-challenged entrepreneurs.

Anonymous said...

The housing crisis was caused partly by loose and easy monetary policy by the FED. We are still pursing this policy. This policy will lead to hyper inflation if it is not stopped. Your dollar will be worth alot less in terms of purchasing power in the not to distant future. Thank you Bush and Obama.

Anonymous said...

AUDIT THE FED. IT'S TIME TO GO BACK TO SOUND MONETARY POLICY BEFORE IT'S TOO LATE!

Mary said...

Yea! Happy days are here again!

Jumper said...

Part of the housing problem was indeed caused by lack of responsible regulation. Lots of it was caused by bullheaded failure to appreciate reality. A few years back I noted that if you make more and more of a product, the price of that product might tend to fall. The other person - a developer - almost angrily informed me that building does NOT work that way!

Jumper said...

"...self-righteous indignation actually triggers many of the same neural-reinforcement processes that underlie addiction. This was already known about rage and gambling. But since indignation poisons inter-human discourse in almost every field — spoiling our natural, pragmatic, problem negotiating skills — this “addiction” may do vastly more damage than all others, put together." - author David Brin

Anonymous said...

There sure are a lot of angry Republicans posting here. They are so furious over their lost election that they lash out at everyone every chance they get these days. It's so funny and ridiculous that they don't see how it makes them look even worse than they usually look, if that's even possible.

As usual I really love their "pay for what only I want and need with tax money and to hell with what anyone else needs". It's hysterically pathetic.

Anonymous said...

There sure are alot of ignorant posts regrading economics. It's ashame people don't know the difference between free markets and central planning. This whole crisis was caused primarily with gov't intervention.

Anonymous said...

"If one regards inflation as an evil, then one has to stop inflating. One has to balance the budget of the government" Ludwig Von Mises

Anonymous said...

Anon 09:26:00 PM,

How so ? I thought it was caused by lack of government intervention and regulation.

Please explain.

Anonymous said...

First off the gov't encouraging backs to loan to people with less than good credit. Secondly, the federal reserve artificially keeping interest rates low. Gov't creates the problem with poor monetary policy and then tries to fix the problem with the same solutions. More debt on an existing large debt sounds absurd at face value.