The area I’m tracking is back to 2004 prices so ur 2 year ago idea on buying is trash. Site was right then and it’s still right.

First it was RE doesnt go down
Then RE will go flat
Now it’s only going to go down a little.

Damn RE shrills cant get it straight. As for ur “soft” landing, thats already toast. We are seeing YOY negative counties all over. Only up from here! LOL

My website tracking Inland Empire

It would now appear that the real estate market as a whole (not just San Diego) is experiencing a correction/decline.

So, you expect Rich to report on Florida, or the whole US, or how about Europe and China? I believe Rich’s claim was that there is a housing bubble in Southern California (not San Diego). For someone who has read the site for two years, you should have known that.

It’s easy to predict something like housing prices or the stock market will decline.

Really? That is a ridiculous statement. No one can predict when a mania will end, but yes we know it will end. It isn’t just because a broken clock is right twice a day, either. It is because we have identified a current mania (or bubble). Apparently you don’t see it for what it is yet.

…you missed a huge run up in the value of what would now be your home.

Exactly why you don’t get it. You are worrying over 2 years of what you think are lost opportunity. Do you understand why home loans are traditionally 30 years long? It is because a house purchase isn’t a 2 year commitment (er, I mean flip).

Rents will rise as owners have to make higher payments and more people will rent because they can’t afford to buy or choose not to until prices correct. This will aide in the softening of any potential landings.

Good luck with that theory. Yes, owners will need to make higher payments, but renters aren’t going to be footing the bill. Renters can pick up and move overnight. People will live in cars before they pay some other idiot’s mortgage. You forget that renters have no obligation to pay anything to anyone.

Huh? Should I have clarified it as ex-renters that tell the landlord they are leaving town that have no obligation to pay the ex-landlord? You should know what I meant when I said they have no obligation to pay. Or is it because you think homedebtors can also just walk away. Sure, they could, but not as easily as a renter.

Or because I said people will live in their cars? Maybe you don’t know that people already live in cars because they can’t afford housing.

So, please explain my “dumb ass” comment.

If you’ve been trying to figure out the general premise of this site for 2 years, then nothing any of us can say in this thread can help you.

Good luck!

I believe most of these predictions are based on sour grapes (regretting missing the opportunity to buy earlier)

I have to admit there is some truth to this post, and it does sting a bit. Better to deal with truth and work through it.

Back in 1998 I realized I needed to get a Bachelors degree if I wanted to buy a house here in San Diego, and move ahead in life. My goal was to graduate, get a good job, buy a house and stay in San Diego forever. Well, during the time I was at UCSD, the housing costs doubled, and tripled in some cases. After I graduated, and got a good job, I STILL could not afford to buy a house. Imagine, an engineer cannot afford a house in San Diego. That’s disgusting. So yes, I do harbor some resentment at this crazy RE market.

With the help of everyone in this site, I’ll get that house someday. I hope so anyway.

I am not a football fan. However, I think a football metaphor is in order.

Regardless of which of these opposing teams a person finds themself, it would be foolish to declare the winner of this game before it ends. That is, until this economic cycle completes and starts over again. If we attribute the peak of the market as representing the end of the 2nd quarter of the game, that would mean that we are currently in the beginning of the 3rd quarter. We are a long ways off from the end of this game.

Now it could be that the 2nd half of this game will go a lot faster than the 1st half; that’s what our soft landing crowd thinks will happen. It’s also possible that the 2nd half could last just as long as the first half; that’s what our Revert-to-Mean adherents think will happen.

We already know that the uber-bulls who were pumping the New Paradigm were flat-out wrong because the market has already gone where they said it wouldn’t go. So the RtM crowd already has a partial victory. Many of the people who did purchase in the last 24 months have already seen their “profits” evaporate, whether they have to sell right now or not. So much for how smart they were.

As for rents, there are a couple things we need to never forget about rents. For one, renters have no long term upside; that is, they have no expectation of profits from appreciation. That means they approach housing costs as being solely about housing, not about retirement or moving up the property ladder or impressing their buddies at work with their financial acumen.

Secondly, rents are tied to solely to wages, not investment income. San Diego wages are increasing only slowly and unevenly, and there is no reason to think they will double or triple in the next 10 years. In fact, in a global economy they CAN’T double or triple in the next 10 years.

That’s why there is only so much room for rents to increase. Unlike a short-horizon investor, a renter has no incentive to spend 50% or more of their income on their housing because they do have options. One of those options is to leave town – we know this because that’s what has been happening here in town for a couple years now. Some of the people leaving town were homeowners and others were people who wanted to be homeowners.

So the bottom line on rents is that will not double or triple in the next 5 years and they will not support the current prices less losses at the soft-landing level.

Now if you have something other that “this is SD and everyone wants to be here” we’d love to listen. But if you want to influence our opinions you’re going to have to back that something up. So far, NOBODY has brought anything in that will stand up to even casual examination.

Sour grapes? What nonsense. A good portion of regular posters on this site sold at or near the peak (myself included). No sour grapes for me, just nice tasty wine…