Historic: Drop in US median Home price

[SON]

Do you think this area will out perform this scenario ?

Scroll down and see what Moody's is saying

http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/08/.../26housing.php

[Just_In_Thyme]

Economists say the decline, which could be foreshadowed in a widely followed government price index to be released this week, will probably be modest — from 1 percent to 2 percent — but could continue in 2008 and 2009.

Seeing as we have already experienced an tremendous drop in values over the last few years, I don't see how another 1-2% is going to make that much of a difference at this point.

You can either hold on to your property, sell for a loss or sell for a gain. The choice is yours.

[SHELLY]

You can either hold on to your property, sell for a loss or sell for a gain. The choice is yours.

....or you can be like this lady in Tampa:

"Like an operator working a buzzing switchboard, Liz Seither deftly juggles the two phones that never stop ringing in her kitchen.

The 67-year-old Clearwater Realtor's eyes are puffy below unkempt flaming orange hair. She begs your pardon for not looking like one of Pinellas County's top home sellers, but her allergies flared up when her dog's fleas bit her.

Equally irritating are the bank warning letters laid out before her on the kitchen table. Seither invested - unwisely it turns out - in expensive Clearwater waterfront property at the peak of the recent boom. Lenders are after her for millions of dollars in debts.

After juggling 15 calls from debtors, creditors and clients, Seither lays the phones aside and delivers a pep talk to herself.

"I'm not a real estate bum," the president of Executive Preferred Properties announces. "I wear diamonds, Rolexes and necklaces. I'm a classy Realtor."

It's a no makeup day for Liz Seither at her home on Island Estates, a barrier island washed by Clearwater Harbor. She's still in slippers, but a diamond anklet dangles from her leg. That and the diamond crucifix around her neck bespeak better times when she prided herself as a "Multi-Million $$$ Producer."

She dials a prospect, a movie theater owner from Alabama who's been hunting for beach deals. His voice mail picks up. Seither leaves a message:

"Hey you bottom feeder you. Call Liz. Call Liz. I'm still your best Florida friend!"

She hangs up the phone and deflates. It's not been her lucky year. Banks threaten to repossess six of seven investment properties. She slashed millions off prices, but still no buyers. Of her 40 home listings, no sales are pending.

She rented her private residence to a guy who fell $15,000 behind in rent. The guy arranged to pay Seither. But when she arrived he had vamoosed with her high-end washer, dryer and refrigerator.

One a recent day Seither took her dog for a walk and a neighbor flagged her down.

"Don't worry, Liz, you're the only one making money," the woman reassured her.

Seither hated to disappoint her.

"My heart was beating 100 miles per hour," Seither recalls. "It was hard to tell her I'm suffering like everyone else."

Seither's agency is a shell of its former self. The 10 agents she once employed are mostly gone. She survives by managing rentals, 150 properties at last count. Rentals: It's a growth market.

At the end of another hectic 12-hour day, she's heading off to dinner. It won't be seafood on the beach, but $7 all-you-can-eat meatloaf next to Kmart.

She laughs a rare laugh before heading off to the feast: "We're economizing these days."

http://www.sptimes.com/2007/08/26/Bu..._out___I.shtml


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[6thGen]

Liz,
BoA is on line 2.

[Miss Kitty]

...Yeah Liz... Rolexes and diamonds make one "classy".

[scooterbug44]

So I am supposed to feel sorry for her because she overextended herself and now has millions in debt?

First suggestion - sell the diamonds she's still sporting!

Second suggestion - learn remedial math and invest more wisely!

[SHELLY]

So I am supposed to feel sorry for her because she overextended herself and now has millions in debt?

Too many people still don't seem to realize that folks like Liz were the rule, rather than the exception, to explain the run-up in property "value" in the state of Florida. There was very little "value added" over the course of the speculation boom, just smoke and mirrors.

From guys like this:

Some investors were experienced players like Barry Beschel of Aventura. After the dot-com stock-market crash in 2000, he said he had no trouble persuading his buddies to park their money in Miami's sizzling condo market.

"All my guys in New York were like, 'Yeah, flipping condos in Miami.' It was a sexy commodity, and it was fun to make money," Beschel said.

It was also easy. Beschel, 50, said his group followed well-known developers such as The Related Group's Jorge Perez to their next project. The king of Florida's condo market, Perez has built or manages more than 55,000 units in the state and is building at least nine new towers in Miami as well as a 441-unit, luxury condo hotel in Celebration.

From 2001 to 2005, Beschel said his group bought about 50 pre-construction condos, sometimes 10 or 12 at a time. They would pay about $300 a square foot and, once the building sold out, return the condos to the developer, who would resell them at $350 a square foot. The difference between the original contract price and the new one -- $100,000 on a 2,000-square-foot unit -- would go to Beschel's group, minus a commission.

"The developer would take his commission, and we'd take our profit and everybody was happy. When the market was cranking, it was a brilliant business model," Beschel said.

But beginning in 2006, Goodkin said, it became clear the market was saturated. Speculators, at least the wise ones, had fled. Buyers stopped walking through the sales-office door. Some developers halted resale programs to concentrate on their own inventory.

And whoever held a contract was stuck -- with prices at their peak. Now, foreclosure filings are up by 30 percent in greater Miami over last year.

For Beschel, whose group still holds contracts on two condos with falling values and looming closing dates, financial ruin isn't a worry. He figures his group made "a few million dollars," so walking away from two $100,000 deposits is no big deal."

http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/...,1813434.story






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[SHELLY]

Liz,
BoA is on line 2.

6th,

Best chuckle of the day!


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[scooterbug44]

This quote from Shelley's article says it all to me:

"We saw the frenzy, and we bought in. Now we're paying the consequences."

[Just_In_Thyme]

Too many people still don't seem to realize that folks like Liz were the rule, rather than the exception, to explain the run-up in property "value" in the state of Florida. There was very little "value added" over the course of the speculation boom, just smoke and mirrors.

Too bad.
Again, are we all supposed to feel bad for people who made bad business decisions and overextended themselves? Especially someone who wears diamonds and Rolex's and looks like they are facing a serious credit problem.

[SHELLY]

Too bad.
Again, are we all supposed to feel bad for people who made bad business decisions and overextended themselves? Especially someone who wears diamonds and Rolex's and looks like they are facing a serious credit problem.

.

To hell with Liz....I feel kinda sorry for Liz's Jeweler.


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[scooterbug44]

I think Liz's jeweler was the smart one - he got paid in full - unless her baubles are financed too .

[Smiling JOe]

I think Liz's jeweler was the smart one - he got paid in full - unless her baubles are financed too .

That 26.99% interest on the credit card for those things that make her classy, is going to leave sore spot. ouch.

[scooterbug44]

From Bill Fleckenstein's column "How regulators fed the credit mess"

"One final comment about the financial world: It's populated with rich, hypocritical whiners. Wall Street, the hedge-fund community and their lap dogs in the news media continually brag about how much they love capitalism and free markets. Yet when the creative-destruction component of capitalism rears its ugly head, they want the central planners to bail them out immediately, before they take any pain. And the ones clamoring the loudest are the very same folks who behaved the most irresponsibly."

[SON]

I'm reading this...
http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/070827/economy.html?.v=13

But Have actually had a few more people asking about real estate around here
than in the last several month.....

[SHELLY]

I'm reading this...
http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/070827/economy.html?.v=13

But Have actually had a few more people asking about real estate around here
than in the last several month.....

What are they asking?

.

[SHELLY]

Ya gotta love the way the Florida Realtors Association can spin a story:

Florida's Existing Home Sales Still Stabilizing in July 2007

ORLANDO, Fla., Aug. 27 /PRNewswire/ -- With positive economic
conditions such as low mortgage interest rates and job growth continuing in
Florida, statewide sales of existing single-family homes totaled 11,674 in
July and were closer to activity in July 2001 and 2002 - before the housing
boom years - than the July 2006 figures, when 15,378 homes sold for a 24
percent decrease in the year-to-year comparison, according to the Florida
Association of Realtors(R) (FAR).

Florida's median sales price for existing single-family homes last
month was $237,500; a year ago, it was $250,400 for a 5 percent decrease. The median is the midpoint; half the homes sold for more, half for less. In July 2002, the statewide median sales price for single-family homes was $141,700, for an increase of 67.6 percent over the five-year-period, according to FAR records.

Sales of existing condominiums in Florida also decreased last month,
with a total of 3,610 condos sold statewide compared to 4,449 in July 2006 for a 19 percent decline, according to FAR. The statewide median sales price for condos last month was $193,900, down 7 percent from July 2006's condo median price of $209,100. NAR reported the national median existing condo price was $228,900 in June 2007.


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[SON]

What are they asking?

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Two of the last three were for prices on specific properties

And one said: Start looking, I think it is getting time to buy.....

[SHELLY]

Two of the last three were for prices on specific properties

And one said: Start looking, I think it is getting time to buy.....

They must be the mob of baby boomers we were expecting.


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[SON]

What are we thinking 2009 now?

http://money.aol.com/news/articles/_...28092809990001