I apologize for sounding smarmy. I can assure you that it is not my intention; I’m just guilty of laying on too much sarcasm.
“As for why it goes up faster and down slower…the answer is EMOTIONS!”
This logic is confuses me because emotions is what caused the recent price run-up in home prices to unnatural heights. Emotions were influenced, as we have come to find out, by speculative buyers snatching up multiple properties with sketchy, short term loans (ARMs, I/Os, etc.). People were emotionally driven to buy a home no matter what the cost because they feared being priced out of the market forever. Their emotions drove them to make some pretty bad financial decisions as prices went up. So again, how will emotions not play into all of this as prices go down? Especially when ARMs are going to reset in the next 2 years (trillions$) and those people that are stuck in homes that haven’t appreciated enough (or depreciated in some places) to where they can refinance? Can you imagine the emotions that would influence someone’s financial decision making process as they watch their mortgage payments go up, a lot, when the ARMs reset and they can’t refinance? How then, can emotions not influence people into repeating an equally bad financial decision as prices go down? If more and more people start placing their homes on the market it will add to the inventory thus driving prices down. Emotions can’t be charted and recorded. Therefore, to claim that the market won’t crash in a short period of time because of their emotions influencing them to hold on to their properties doesn’t hold a lot water.
“my children feel safe and secure in their home”
Now that sounds like you are being condescending. Are you implying that children growing up in a rental home are not as secure or safe? I’ll take that statement as payment for my smarmy remarks.