The Great Turn Around of 2010

[JWM in SD]

“But I don’t think anyone called the 2005 peak, at least not with any certainty at the time.”

Pretty sure that it was Nov 05 and it was identified by at least January 06.

[an]

LostCat, I totally agree with you. New data come out all the time which may or may not change the direction of the expected path/speed of decline. Many of the topics on here have been discussed before. If duplicated gets weed out, this site would be dead. I also stick to the motto of, if I have nothing nice to say, I’ll say nothing at all.

[an]

“Pretty sure that it was Nov 05 and it was identified by at least January 06.”

Please provide the post of those who called it 3 months later? I’ve been around since the beginning and I don’t remember anyone that confident about it being the top at the time. Some people think it’s the top but they didn’t call it w/ any certainty.

[JWM in SD]

It may not have been on this blog in particular, but rather on the Ben Jones blog. At that time, I was more active there than here. I’ll look for it….

[waiting hawk]

itulip made a huge post in June 2005 and said we were at the top. MANY nailed the top and bells were ringing louder than any other bubble prior.

Here is one in Jan 05
http://www.itulip.com/housingbubblecorrection.htm

[NotCranky]

I think anectdotally there is evidence for several people having called the top. In fact if someone showed up tomorrow and said “hey I dumped my house between spring of 2004 and spring of 2006, because I knew that market was or would be toast”, I would say that is proof enough that someone called the top. Plenty of us are already here who did such things. I think if someone went to the trouble to start a blog they also called the top. Maybe reasonable humility say’s you don’t crow like a rooster about it but if you started a blog(or started a new life a housing bubble blogger on the bear side) that says something.If we want to make a federal case out of these things we will have to call in witnesses and more evidence. C’mon AN, trust me, many people were all over this bubble.

[JWM in SD]

Closest Post I could find on short notice…from…drum roll please…none other than Powayseller herself:

Deceiving Data for North County Sales
User Forum Topic
Submitted by powayseller on December 13, 2005 – 6:46pm.
The latest data from the NAR seems to indicate that the housing market is robust, but if you look deeper, you find that speculators are fleeing the market.

From the North County Times:
“Detached home prices up 14 percent from year ago

By: BRADLEY J. FIKES – Staff Writer

NORTH COUNTY —- Defying warnings that a real estate bubble is about to deflate, the median price of existing single-family homes in North County rose significantly in November”….

Actually, the bubble is deflating. Later in the article, a realtor is speculating about the reasons for the higher median home price: investors, who buy lower-priced properties to flip, have fled the market.

The numbers show 30% more listings, and 20% fewer sales (compared y-o-y). Put that together, and you have a much smaller percentage of available homes sold: 50% of listings sold this year, vs. almost 100% last year.

If we look around at signs and talk to friends, we find out that houses are on the market much longer, with multiple reductions.

Does anyone have data on the sales price/original list price, or the # of reductions on sales price?

[an]

At any given point in time, there are bulls and there are bears. Bears will always call the top and bulls will always call the bottom. When you call top often enough, you’ll hit it once in awhile. Just look at powayseller’s other call. I’m still waiting for S&P 500 hitting 500. Just like the bulls calling these plateau on the down side as bottom. Eventually, they’ll be right. While the bear’s pessimism will probably miss the bottom just like the bulls who missed the top due to their optimism. I remember people start calling top since 2002. Of course, more and more people join in as we get to 2005. Just like people are calling bottom now. We’re here because we’re bearish on the RE market. It’s been a proven fact that no one can call top or bottom in any market with any consistency. We all can be bull/bears and identify the trend but calling top/bottom is a fool’s game. Just because the top is well defined this time doesn’t mean the bottom will be as well defined. What IF we have a huge drop off next year @ 30% and stay flat for 10 years. Where would that bottom be?

[NotCranky]

Is it just me AN, or are you presenting a circular, back pedalling,vexatious argument?

[an]

All I was saying is I agree with Bug in that calling top/bottom is a fool’s game. Show me anyone who can do that with consistency and I’ll concede. Sorry, but powayseller is not one of them. Those who sold in 2004-2006 are not either. They might be lucky unless they also bought in 1996, sold in 1989, etc. No back pedaling here.

[JWM in SD]

AN,

Although PS is a controversial figure here, it wasn’t her that I was drawing a conclusion from, but rather the article she posted and the timeframe of her post as some degree of objective evidence.

It was pretty interesting to revisit the posts from 18+ mos ago. Quite a contrast from what we are seeing now.

[Ex-SD]

asianautica: I’ve got news for you. I saw this thing coming as far back as the middle of 03 and started making a plan where we would sell our home and move out of CA in the spring of 05. We did just that and although we may have missed the tip top by several months, we were pretty close. You don’t have to be a rocket scientist with a PHD to see what was going to happen to the housing market in CA. Demographic information on each city and state is only as far away as a Google search and when you look at income vs the price of housing in CA………anyone who paid any attention to this matter would come to the conclusion that home owners in bubble markets were likely to be where they are today. I have several friends who did exactly what we did and sold within a month or two of when we sold our home. They either became renters or moved out of state to places where housing prices were in line with median incomes.
You can spin it anyway you want but there ARE plenty of people on this site and others who called this bubble-burst within months of the initial downturn and they called it as much as two to three years before it happened.

[JWM in SD]

“However, like anything in life, it’s unpredictable in many ways and your argument will be just as good as anyone’s until after the fact and history has been written.”

No, actually it was quite predictable and painfully so for a lot of the original housing bears.

[an]

Sorry to say but near the top is not equal the top. I’ve been a bear in RE market since 2002 too. I’ve been saying it can’t go on much longer for many years before it actually stop. Since you’re one of those geniuses who can actually call top and bottom, you must be a billionaire by now since we’ve gone through 2 HUGE bubble in the last 10 years. All you need is $10k in 1997 to be a billionaire by now. Shouldn’t you be @ some beach sipping maitai now instead of being on piggington like us average folks who can’t seem to call tops & bottoms for the life of us?

[JWM in SD]

“Shouldn’t you be @ some beach sipping maitai now instead of being on piggington like us average folks who can’t seem to call tops & bottoms for the life of us?”

Predicting and risking money are two different things. Anyone who bet on bearishness too early would have been burned at the stake in the markets.

I did however make a nice bundle on Country Fried though 😉

[Author]

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