Just wanted to chime in that I was one who also benefited from Piggington.
I don’t know when I first found the site, it was pretty early in the housing bubble. There wasn’t much discussion but there were some posts by Rich with links to articles about the housing market. I was suspicious about the housing bubble but not confident in my views.
In Nov. 2004 I sold the house I had been living in for a good price, then a bit later got married and by mid 2005 my wife and I were looking to buy. Searching on housing bubble san diego I found Piggington. I didn’t become a regular or sign up to post at that time, just lurked a bit. Then I decided that the site was just too negative and was slowing down my purchase plans so I stopped visiting. But I couldn’t bring myself to pull the trigger on a purchase. Five or six month later I returned, and the site was more active.
Once I returned I became more convinced of the housing bubble. Soon after I fired our realtor. My wife and I settled into a nice rental and I continued to lurk on piggington for another year before posting. Since then I’ve lurked more, posted a little and bought a house in fall of 2009. I still mostly just lurk, only posting once in a while, and wonder how the heck you frequent posters have the time to post these long political diatribes. To each his own though.
But I will forever be grateful to Rich and this site for giving me the info that I need to hold fast from 2005 until 2009 waiting for the bubble to peak, pop, and deflate. It wasn’t always easy to go against all the people who said that housing only goes up. And of course that great line, “Land! They aren’t making any more of it.”
