Has the housing market hit bottom?

Question

Here is CNN's take on it.

http://promo.realestate.yahoo.com/promo/housing:-itll-get-worse.html

Kathy Potter · Answer

blm,
In our Phoenix market it has become normal appraisal practice to include foreclosures as comps since so many of our current sales are foreclosures.

Peter Moss · Answer

Seg_Cost - Interested in your opinion in Austin. We're looking at buying within the 360 loop and are trying to research the market there right now. What area would you say represent the best value at the moment. Our budget is $350-400k. Thanks. Peter

Jack Bobeck · Answer

Here in Jacksonville, FL, our property appraiser does not recognize foreclosed sales, because the two parties did not get together to create a sale. For some stupid reason, these are seen as only a distressed sale.  :protest:

Another problem with buy and flippers is that half-baked appraisers come in and give you comps from wherever they "feel" like, so long as the comps are within 2 or 3 miles. Had that happen to me. Appraiser brought in comps from another freakin zip code, 3 miles away when good comps were less than .25 miles away from the subject property.

Tracy Harmon · Answer

The end isn't even close, see my post "analysis of income vs home prices".  Life will be hard for quite a while kids.  Please keep your arms and legs inside the car at all times.

Jack Ryan · Answer

LOL, more often than not CNN just regurgitates what some analysts are saying and lately those analysts have been wrong more often than not...

My personal opinion?

Market at a >TEMPORARY< bottom due to all the perceived bargains for the summer as a catalyst to pushing first time buyers out to buy.  We might even bounce (dead-cat) small for a little bit.

The next BIG leg down starts in the fall where $135-140/barrel crude really starts taking it's toll and the wide-spread job losses start occuring coupled with possible reduction in mortgage purchases by the GSE's (freddie & fannie) and the fed bumping rates up a tad to support the weak dollar.

Willamina Hansen · Answer

good clip from CNN ... and yeah, it's crazy out there right now. I do worry about where we, as home owner are going, with times heading where they are, how are we going to hold on to our homes? As a homeowner myself, it's what I've worked so hard for to get & keep, it really upsets me to think I may loose it.
Will

Michael Shadow · Answer

Personally I don't think we're near the bottom yet.  I was just in a neighboring town yesterday and I was stunned to be driving down the main street of the town and there were at least 3-4 for sale signs on every block.  The town probably has a population of 5k-7k and it's in rural PA but close enough to a 20k population town that suspect is where most of the residents work at.

I feel like the media is trying to help kick start people into thinking the housing market is at it's bottom to get people buying again but the stats I get from my local Realtor on absorbtion rates, DOM, and prices says it's not near over yet.

We also haven't seen the mass majority of the option arms begin to reset yet, that's another 2 years away until that wave gets here.

-Michael

Clint S. · Answer

Yeah definitely not at the problem as foreclosures keep going up.

The values are just getting slaughtered in some neighborhoods because of the foreclosures.

If you are doing fix and flips you have to be careful because when you buy the property the value is X and by the time you fix it up and try to sell it the value is X - Y because of the foreclosures are used as comps.

Clint S. · Answer

I am actually talking about a lot of different markets.  It happens in "good markets".

I am overseeing some houses getting built in Austin and when they started building last summer the value was $470,000 and now they won't sell for more then $375,000 and they are not even finished building it.

Of course there are a few markets across the country where that is not the issue but most markets at this point have foreclosures hurting values.