Downtown Desperation

[rankandfile]

I came across this article on Boston Globe online about the downtown San Diego condo situation. It appears that developers have reached the point of desperation in trying to lure buyers. Here is the link:

http://www.boston.com/realestate/news/articles/2006/08/14/as_condo_sales_stall_builders_roll_out_the_perks/

One thing that really stood out was the sentence about developer Maisel Presley trying to lure buyers by dropping the asking price by $1000 per day until it sells. Talk about counterproductive.

It just goes to show you that the housing slowdown is in full force and has spread like wild fire. This helps support my theory that this particular housing market crash will occur more quickly and violently than previous ones. The key difference between this market crash and the others is the increased level of communication accorded by the internet.

We are hereby in a housing decline, baby.

[powayseller]

You bring up an interesting point, that isn’t discussed much. How much will blogs, online sites like ZipRealty and RealtyTimes,foreclosure.com, snooping on your neighbor’s tax payments on the County Assessor site, snooping on your neighbor’s property values in zillow, checking out what people paid for their homes on zillow, comments on blogs feeding back to journalists, ability to view homes (and see # of inventory), affect psychology? As Rich and Bugs wrote, psychology was what brought up prices, and what will bring it down. Rapid dissemination of information is accelerating this decline.

Without piggington, I would NEVER have found out this was a bubble. I would still be living in my house. I would not have met all these people who taught me about real estate, like my best friend SD Realtor (ok, there you are, in the limelight:)), and Bob Casagrand. I would not have learned from Bob C. that months inventory is the best way to track changes in home prices, that the median is lagging, etc. I would not have known this is a national housing problem, that foreclosures are rising, the problem with ARMs. I would be another sheeple.

A journalist should do a story on the influence of the internet on the housing bust.

[rankandfile]

I remember learning in middle school, many years ago, that learning is geometric…it’s pace is ever-increasing. The older I get, the more I believe this to be true. The Internet has greatly increased the level at which we humans can communicate with each other. And an increase in communication generally leads to an increase in knowledge through the transfer of ideas, viewpoints, opinions, etc.

It’s funny because it seems as though this particular housing crash should’ve already occurred by now – I mean a full-fledged media crash that everyone knows about. It’s as though we have travelled in time to the future. Which is what I’ve heard is what happens if we could travel at the speed of light. We would move far enough into the future such that we would see ourself walking toward us. Pretty trippy, huh?

This is the type of post I write after too many servings of red wine on an empty stomach. Without this blog, and the internet in general, I’d probably be curled up in the fetal position with my thumb in my mouth.

[lindismith]

I love reading Piggington first thing in the morning.

Rank, are you coming to our next meet-up?

[no_such_reality]

I see these stories all over the place. My question, why is the San Diego condo over development a mainline story for the Boston Globe?

Is it that Boston, did the same kind of condo glut overbuild and tank in 89-90? Or is this type of story, a kind of perversion of the news. I recall stories in the LA Times talking about the property tax problem in Las Vegas, that’s somewhat relevant as many speculators in LA owned LV property. But they’ve also run stories on the real estate market in further less connected places.

[barnaby33]

Are you hinting that maybe the story is a proxy for things closer to home? Maybe that because of advert revenue the news outlets won’t shit in their own backyard, but have no problem doing so in others?

Josh

[Bugs]

I know a lot of people are watching to see what happens here. San Diego has been identified as the canary for what will happen in the “New Paradigm” markets.

[rankandfile]

I am not sure if I will make it to the next meetup. When/where is it?

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