For me, the biggest lesson of this upswing and downswing in the home market is not that it's a good idea to limit your home purchase to what you can comfortably afford with low borrowings. Nope, the lesson is that it's a good idea to take maximum advantage in non-recourse states of any stupid lender who'll offer 100% loans at low teaser rates. Buy lots of properties when the market is heading up, and start cashing them out as the market continues to head up. When the market heads down, you only lose tiny amounts compared to your gains. What a racket!
Actually, I had learned this lesson when I was just in junior high during the 90'ies RE crash in Southern CA. There were plenty of parents of my classmates from who bought a lot of real estate, on the way up and started cashing in. Of course when RE crashed, some of the remaining homes couldn't close. So all remaining homes got foreclosed. I talked to the classmate during this time and asked him that aren't your parents worried about being foreclosed and having so many credit dings. That because I knew my parents were always conservative, responsible people and had explained to me what it meant to be "in over your head"..My classmate sort of laughed and said , you're parents worries are so old fashion…Then he told me something his parents told him, something that stuck with me.
"When you borrow $50,000 from the bank and cant repay it, who's problem is it? That's right, it's yours. When you borrow several million dollars from the bank and can't repay it, who's problem is it? That's right, it's the banks." His parents walked out on several loans, but in the process cashed out several millions in other properties.
I think all the problems we are seeing in RE now is so astonishing. Not because of the overleveraged overpriced people themselves. It's that the banks let themselves get into another mess again. They knew this was going to be a game of musical chairs, and the when the music stopped, the ones left with the CDO's would lose. And the fact that CDO's came into existence to me seemed like their attempt to pass all these risks to someone else, although the RE market crapped out too soon with alot of the institutions hands still stuck in the cookie jar. It appears also they figured that no matter what, government would intervene. I see so many threads about how it's unfair the government is trying to bailout so many people. While I agree with that sentiment, my take is simple. The government is going to do whatever to bailout the banks. Anything else that helps the overleveraged Joe is icing on the cake. That's why i think you will see bailouts. Banks never learned their lessons from the previous fiasco.
I can't complain myself though. Because I too never learn from mistakes of my parents. Unfortunately, my parents raised me to be financially responsible. At the same time, being so, they bleed through there noses in taxes. In the end, I fear I'll end up paying in taxes to support all those who were irresponsible. Hence my paranoia and concern about being a wage slave in 10 years. There's going to be a new set of classes in U.S.
(1)Rich people who don't pay taxes, (2)lazy/irresponsible people that will take a government handout who also don't pay taxes, and (3) poor W-2 people who pay taxes up the noses.
The real losers of all this are the people that aren't rich by tomorrow's standards, but were financially responsible. If at all, we're moving toward a welfare state. You can say all you want is this is "fair" or "not fair", morale or "not morale". It is what it is. We won't learn from this fiasco, just like we didn't learn from the one in the 90ies. There will be a lot of hand waving, a lot of talk about regulation, and some new "regulatory" laws will pass. Things will settle down, get more stable..In about 10 years, some genius on wall street will figure out another way for banks to get into another big mess, intentionally. And the cycle will continue.
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sandiego, your choice is simple. Decide if you want to think of your 2003 purchase as an investment OR as a doo-dad purchase. If it's the former, you bought at the wrong time in retrospect, so abandon ship. If you bought this to satisfy your material needs and can afford to live there, and are materially attached to it, so be it. You paid MSRP while people around you will be soon buying on a Black-Friday sales event. It's that simple. I see the same bluring of the line on another thread dealing with Carmel Vally homes, where some are trying to justify why their home in a new Pardee development (aka Derby Hills an Saratoga) are going to hold value which the rest of CV corrects. Um, yeah right. I guess that was one other reason why I really don't like buying into a new community in this stage. Although i think there is consensus RE is going to fall, buying into a new community, you don't know how sketchy you're neighbors financing were, because they were all new buyers. Whileas if you buy into an older neighborhood, chances are there are more people around you are more stable. This isn't about preventing home depreciation.. It's about if you want to live in your place regardless of whether things go up or down, it would suck if your street or complex is vacant and you're the only one there.
The good news, is there are lots of people who are in the same boat as you. Case in point, I regularly admit I bought in 2004.I'm staying put. The part that sort of takes a bite out is the fact we did sell something prior to a purchase, and the attached market seems to be hitting bottoms at faster rate then SFH so far. But still, things are going to take a hit. Do I care? Well, yes and no. If the prices go through the roof, I wouldn't be complaining. At the same time, when prices fall, yeah it's gonna kinda suck on paper. Big frickin deal. Primary homes imho aren't investments, so don't kid yourself that they are.
