I like your post, but here are some non-disgruntled thoughts for you – hope we can have a civil discussion here.
Have you ever heard of the concept of the boiling frog?
Supposedly (but I don’t think they’ll prove this one on Mythbusters) if you put a frog in boiling water, he’ll leap out immediately. However, if you put a frog in cold water and slowly heat it up, you can basically boil it without it getting out. This is the best description of how this housing market is going. Buyers are getting boiled slowly and they don’t even realize it.
I agree too many people here expect the market to drop, like a stock market crash. In fact, it will continue to slide slowly down for a long, long time.
This makes it difficult to see the past, present and future deflation of the bubble. Looking at the current status will always show the market isn’t too bad. It isn’t dropping too fast. There are always some buyers who will need to buy a home.
I do think your post lacks data at all. Check out the tagline at the bottom of this forum “In God We Trust. Everyone Else Bring Data.” Going out into the field is interesting, but because the market varies so much by neighborhood, it is not a good way to gauge the county-wide market. Such anecdotal evidence is exactly the kind of thing that the founder of this forum wanted to avoid.
I won’t say that the market now is really bad. What is bad is the foundation on which the market is riding. It is looking pretty crumbly.
The growing months of inventory, rising foreclosures, the tightening of the credit markets, dropping price per square foot, outmigration, retail sales crash in April. What conditions do you see that will keep this market healthy? Answer me that one.
The boiling frog looks at the current state of the market.
The smart frog looks at the underlying conditions that suggest how the market will be in the future.
I bought in Clairemont 8 years ago. The home has tripled in value. By stopping at “for sale” signs, regularly, I see prices have been pretty stable this year – only down a couple percent.
