Homestead mailing list

[Clansgian AT wmconnect.com]

Like the Zen koan of 'one hand clapping' the main stream media have been 
reporting housing data from basically only one source, the NAR.  While you'll 
not 
find anything in the NAR reports that is out and out mendacity, they do put a 
spin on things.  For instance:

"The slowdown in the once-sizzling housing market is spreading, with 28 
states and the District of Columbia reporting spring sales declines, led by 
big 
drops in former boom areas of Arizona, Florida and California. 
-----------
The five biggest declines this spring compared to the April-June period of 
2005 were Arizona, down 26.9 percent; Florida, down 26.7 percent; California, 
down 25.3 percent; Virginia, down 23.9 percent, and Nevada, down 23.5 
percent."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060815/ap_on_bi_ge/home_sales

That's not so bad, eh?  28 states with declining sales.  No bubble.  Just 
location, yeah, that's the ticket.

My 'one hand' comment comes from this.  Note that the data compares 
April-June with April-June a year ago.  BUT if you compare July with January 
of this 
year, it's quite a different tale.  Almost ALL markets are showing a decline 
and 
some are showing ruinous decines, although I don't know how much more ruinous 
it has to get than Arizona's 26.9% decline.

When looking at the inevitable bursting of the bubble, I had allowed for 
prices to level out and sales to decline as has happened in many real estate  
cycles in the past.  That's enough for major mayhem since most speculators 
and 
investors and those borrowing on their equity depend on ever increasing 
prices 
and ever increasing rates of sale.  But similar six month data shows a great 
number of areas where housing values are dropping.  Not a great deal now, no 
where more than 10% or so at present it seems.  But that is changing.

Where am I getting all this?   Blogs.  See for example:

http://thehousingbubbleblog.com/
http://bubbletrack.blogspot.com/
http://calculatedrisk.blogspot.com/
http://housingpanic.blogspot.com/
http://bubblemeter.blogspot.com/
http://patrick.net/wp/

The first one in the list is the most serious treatment and the last one the 
most entertaining and irreverend.  Now, to be sure, take anything you read on 
the internet with a small Siberian salt mine, and on blogs doubly so.  But 
with open comments, it isn't possible to say anything the figures don't back 
up, 
you'd be eaten alive by the readers.

The 'whistle past the graveyard' reporting by the NAR is shredded in the 
blogs, although the NAR itself is beginning to admit something more momentous 
than 
a correction or 'soft landing' is taking place, and not just in a few areas, 
it's everywhere.

Along with the cold figures and charts plotting trends, the bloggers are 
highly entertaining calling Miami, San Diego, Washington, Phoenix and such 
cities 
as "Bubblopolis".  The quotes from frustrated real estate agencies, while 
pathetic, are none the less funny so long as you are by yourself in the night 
and 
no one can see you laughing, the likes of "I told my clients they have no 
reason to complain.  You've always said you dream was to downsize from a 
$1,000,000 house to a $500,000 house.  Now you are realizing that dream and 
you won't 
even have to go to the bother of moving!"

My favorite one comes from here:

http://thehousingbubbleblog.com/index.php?s=box+of+stupid

In explaining how *asking* prices can remain so high in some areas, the 
comment was that the seller was hoping someone  "'with a bucket of money and 
a box 
of stupid’ will show up to pay too much.”