Sorry about the 4 posts…there’s a bug in squarespace so often my entries are posted 5-7 times. I always erase them, but left it up this time so the administrators could see the bug.
While I sold my house and don’t think anyone should buy now, the fact is, lots of people are still buying. Several of these buyers are posting on piggington about their purchase. Some people cannot be talked out of buying. My philosophy is: if you can’t be talked out of buying, get all the information you can and work with a good realtor. But if you avoid it, don’t buy now.
SD Realtor did not pay me to put his listing on my site. I approached him. I asked him if he had any listings I could put up for my “Neighborhood Focus” series. The purpose is to feature a different San Diego neighborhood each month, so we can all learn about this city, and where we might want to buy someday. Last month, I featured a house in Eastlake.
Mine is a housing analysis and commentary website. I love San Diego, I love real estate, and I like good realtors. My mission is to educate.
I stay in contact with realtors. I absolutely need to keep a good rapport with realtors for my work. How can I know what is going on in the housing market just from looking at data? The reason I offer so many exclusives on my site, is precisely because I talk to lots of realtors, so I can understand what is going on. I am the only person who has San Diego inventory, who explained why foreclosures are a lagging indicator, why prices are not falling now. I didn’t get any of that from sitting at my desk, but by being out in the field, talking with people.
Now I am working on the employment data for Southern CA, which I have not seen posted anywhere yet. Alan Gin made an incorrect remark in the UT about falling retail; I am going to correct him. He did not account for the seasonal Dec-Jan decline in home furnishing retailers.
Of course I am going to charge for that. I am grateful for the support, and the people who have signed up for the premium content. As more people have signed up, I feel more of an obligation to give them their money’s worth, so there is more premium content lately.
Interesting fellow, this woodrow, who seeks to destroy and belittle, rather than raise the discourse of the housing and economic discussion. If anyone were to be eliminated from the blogs, it should be the woodrows, whose belittling comments taint the entire blog. Roubini now has a login requirement, because he was getting so many low quality posts, of the type just discussed.
SDAppraiser, I think you are way out of line. The realtors how post here give us the insider view on what is going on. If they stopped selling houses as you suggest, then the entire market would come to a standstill, no seller could sell their house, and none of us would have the benefit of knowing what is going on in the market. Just because you and I don’t want to buy, doesn’t mean that everyone is going to listen to us.
Several realtors have told me they almost begged their buyers to wait for a while to buy… but the wife just HAD to have a house. In one case, the couple went to another realtor because they were tired of the good realtor telling them to wait. In another case, the wife HAD to have the house as soon as they moved here; they refused to live in the rental the realtor had arranged for them. They did not want to live here for 6 months to get to know the area, take their time. Yet, some readers here are saying the realtor is a bad person for pushing them into a house?
Everything I have been writing about is now starting to happen. The housing decline, the recession, the stock market correction, the lender fallouts, the credit crunch…. Come see me over at CaliforniaHousingForecast.com.
