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  • From: Clansgian AT wmconnect.com
  • To: homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [Homestead] Real estate market analysis, 7/24/08
  • Date: Fri, 25 Jul 2008 21:03:08 EDT



> >This article seems as lucid and balanced as any I have read in the
> last year:

Good article, yes, lucid, but I'm having trouble seeing it as 'balanced'. It
is, I'd say from my other readings on the subject, accurate, but balancing
what with what?

Many real estate articles heretofore usually have some proviso of some sort.
"Yes, prices and sales seem to have tanked, but the good news is ..."

But the same people that correctly (uncancannily correctly) predicted the
current debacle when the cheerleaders and whistlers-past-the-graveyard, were
eternally predicting the bottom ... those same peple are now suggesting there
may
be no bottom!

To wit: We made our bimonthly treck into town with the gunwales of the van
loaded with wares and people and returning just as loaded with materials and
such. The route takes us by three locations of interest. Two of them are
clusters of new houses built about three years ago, modest houses that
originally
were priced at about $90K or a bit more, about fifteen houses in each group.
One group is in Tennessee and the other in Virginia. Three years now we've
gone by those developments and not one house has sold. Not one. Likewise
the
third area was one of the most picturesque farm fields on the route, located
on
Virginia state road 666 no less. It was always the most carefully tended few
acres of corn, rye, timothy, or alfalfa as the crops were rotated from season
to season. Then suddenly about six months ago, the fences were ripped down,
the border of trees along the road razed to the root, and the whole place was
divided up into building lots. So far ... no sales.

New houses are now sitting empty for a long time, even here in the backwater.
In some places they are succumbing to vandals and the elements they've been
standing unoccupied so long.

Those dwelling in the old paradigm keep looking for the market to turn around
and use up all this excess inventory. Bound to happen, no? Someday, if we
just wait long enough, right?

Maybe not. The paradigm is shifting. Before the only pattern we could see
is that "new households" would inevitably form as people retired, grown
children moved out, immigrants came in, people bought secong homes .. etc.
etc. etc.
But it looks as though that isn't happening. Households are consoldating
much faster than they are forming.

That is, many of these houses may *never* sell.

So there may be no acutal balance to the story. Like Tevye in "Fiddler on
the Roof" when he examined the question deeply enough, we may be concluding
that
"There is on other hand!"



James </HTML>




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