2010 Real Estate Predictions: More Foreclosures, Home-Price Declines

TIME:

The decimated housing market may get considerably worse before it gets better, according to housing-industry professionals, who expect foreclosures and home-price declines to continue pressuring the sector through at least the first half of 2010.

Read the whole story: TIME

Comments

[Stuart Drossner]

01:04 AM on 02/05/2010

I think this article is to general, for example I am a Realtor in Miami Beach FL, and all I can tell you is that there's way more buyers then inventory, there's only a small amount of foreclosures in the Miami Beach area. So I think at least this area has seen it's worse! If you have the cash buy now in South Florida! Check it out, http://www.stuartdrossner.com - Stuart Drossner Realtor

[EyeGalDoc]

06:13 PM on 01/13/2010

2010 will be a hit or miss year. CRE will definitely be in the rut it's in and won't recover just yet from the recession. Unemployment just as well will be taking a breather, and won't look up for a while, but not for long of course. Take a look at this blog post that I was reading on a while ago, it has some great insight about the year 2010 and also has some other points of view for 2010.
http://www.brokerforyou.com/brokerforyou/san-diego-real-estate-2010-forecast-2.html

[JoeBlough]

03:55 PM on 01/11/2010

This is great news. Someday my son will be able to buy a house honestly.

[my whitehouse]

11:07 AM on 01/11/2010

welcome to the 'new normal' - no jobs, but record bonuses for wall street. A cabinet largely indifferent to the struggle of average Americans. What a joke.
hat tip to http://iamned-website.blogspot.com

[halfman]

01:41 PM on 01/09/2010

House prices will fall until workers can afford to buy houses. Worker's income's are currently diminished and diminishing. So prices have a lot of catching up to do. The government is trying to slow the descent of prices by subsidizing buyers and the Fed is doing its part by keeping interest rates low. These policies are questionable, however, because taxes and inflation only serve to further impoverish the workers. Worker friendly public policies are what is needed to bring back home ownership as we have known it. Fair trade, single payer, and card check are examples. Regulation, antitrust enforcement and reduced defense spending are the other side of the coin.

Unfortunately, workers no longer have a voice in the formulation of public policy. We will have to find a way to restore democracy and the rule of law before we can restore prosperity to American workers.

[DonAbernathy]

05:29 PM on 01/08/2010

And just think…people actually voted for this deliberate tanking of the economy. Go figure!

[StJames]

09:44 AM on 01/10/2010

You're referring to the elections of 2000 and 2004 correct?

[Razz]

12:27 PM on 01/08/2010

Home prices are still way overvalued. No matter how much money we pour into this mess, it’s still not going to fix the problem. This is because of Debt-to-income ratio. Most people owe more money then they bring in every month. Add to this, their over inflated home mortgage debt, and you have a financial disaster. Most people cannot really afford to be in their overpriced homes. We need a real home value adjustment so that it will fall inline with our income.
I hope that the housing market tanks even further, to reflect our DTI at a reasonable range than what it is now.

[MrBadExample]

01:22 PM on 01/08/2010

Razz--
I don't think the housing market's demise is something we should cheer on. There's huge pain out there. and it's hitting people on all income levels.

I've written several posts about this, but I'm not gleeful about bad times, and I have friends and family who are underwaters or unemployed (or in some cases both). We need to get past the finger pointing and reboot our reality--and understand that there will never be a return to the pre-2007 economic paradigm.

[Razz]

01:58 PM on 01/08/2010

I am not gleeful about this. I am just saying that home prices are too high, no matter what we do, we will not be able to fix this problem because of the monster it was created. We are only prolonging the pain and suffering by patching it with a band-aid here and there. I am not saying that people should move out if they cannot afford to live in their house, but they should consider the alternatives, maybe by renting.

[StJames]

09:48 AM on 01/10/2010

Mr. Bad: I would be much more optimistic if I believed "there will never be a return to the pre-2007 economic paradigm" As soon as the banks and corporatists have milked the system for the maximum profits possible...the good times will start to roll again for just enough people to keep the thieves in power. They don't quite own every asset in the country yet...so more will need to be swindled.

[comicpro]

12:24 PM on 01/08/2010

They pay these guys for saying that? Hell I know that!!! The housing market and forcosures are just getting started!!

[MrBadExample]

11:27 AM on 01/08/2010

There will be no 'fixing' of this problem. We had a bubble in housing prices. It burst. We're not halfway through correction yet. We'll know we're coming out when the median home price in a given market is consistent with what the median household in that market can afford. Since median incomes are falling off a cliff as a result of the recession, the banks don't know what a 'median' income will be. They don't want to take cramdowns now and have to revist the same loans three years hence. Additionally, much of what was newly built during the bubble is unsustainable--we're not going to be able to afford to drive 50+miles each way to work in order to support a 2200 sf house that we can't afford to heat or cool. Blame peak oil or blame the falling dollar, the era of cheap energy is over.

Any attempt to reinflate housing prices (such as the first time buyer's credit) is doomed.

[martiniandabotoxchaser]

11:10 AM on 01/08/2010

Home prices are linked to the employment rate. Some unemployed have been able to stay in homes and try to ride out the storm for a while with saving but after a while even the most diligent and conservative is forced to give up their home. What is needed is a restructuring where holders of mortgages (often not banks) are forced to renegotiate and lengthen terms to allow the market to recover. WE also need banking legislation to force the institution that makes a mortgage to hold that mortgage for the length of the mortgage so there is a real institution that has a stake in a loan and is there for a loan workout.

[No2bailouts]

11:01 AM on 01/08/2010

hat tip to http://iamned-site.blogspot.com

We're all getting tired of this 'improving' BS. More jobloss is not improvement.

[Tazru]

05:22 PM on 01/08/2010

SPAM!!

Flagged and Reported.

[MrBadExample]

10:55 AM on 01/08/2010

Partisan wrangling aside, there's no way to reboot the economy and the housing market back to where it was before the meltdown started in 2007. Nobody in the Oval office would be able to do it. Our boomlet (such as it was) happened because of three things that will never happen again: high disposable incomes for the boomers (who've just begun retiring); lots of fake home equity and lots of credit feeding a huge shopping boom; and a strong dollar and (relatively) cheap energy prices. We're not getting any of those things back again.

Real estate prices will continue to reset until a median price home is affordable for a median-income family. Since median household income was flat from 2001-2008 (when it started to fall), and since interest rates are going to go up because of increasing inflation pressures due to energy prices, home prices have a lot farther to fall.

We have a convention of black swans landing on the front lawn of the White House. somebody's going to have to give us the bad news. Bush's answer was to kick the can down the road and hope things didn't blow up before January 09. Obama doesn't have that option.

[lemondade]

10:18 AM on 01/08/2010

I WAS ANGRY WHEN PRESIDENT CLINTON SAID, "IT ISN'T TIME YET FOR AN AFRICAN AMERICAN PRESIDENT. NOW I KNOW WHAT HE WAS REALLY SAYING, "THE FAR RIGHT WILL FIGHT AN AFRICAN AMERICAN PRESIDENT ON EVERY LITTLE THING SO HE WILL NOT BE ABLE TO GET ANYTHING ACCOMPLISHED."

When 'black' porters or cooks on the trains were off duty and trying to sleep on their beds of rock; the 'white' workers or passengers would bang things and yell and so on so that the 'black' workers could not get any sleep. That happened up until about (still going on?).

[USAFVET76]

05:14 PM on 01/08/2010

Blame gamer.
No one needs to fight this President on ANYTHING.
He's making all the wrong decisions..............starting with his cabinet and virtually every decision since then.

[aweissnet]

06:57 PM on 01/08/2010

You speak much truth!

[MaxBob]

10:07 AM on 01/08/2010

Is SS in a crisis? You tell me.

http://www.ssa.gov/cgi-bin/ops_series.cgi

[Steven Duke]

10:15 AM on 01/08/2010

SS is fully funded through 2040 and would be even further out if not for the cons replacing funds with IOU's for 30 years. The trust fund set up for the boomers is currently fully funded. If you eliminated the regressive SS tax and took the income caps off it would never have a problem. Better yet if you reversed it so that only those making over 100,000 payed into it in stead of only up to 100,000 it would still be fully funded, how does that sound?

[MaxBob]

10:00 AM on 01/08/2010

Overall, 48 states saw tax collections fall during the third quarter of 2009, with 22 states experiencing a double-digit percentage decline. During the previous quarter, 36 states saw a double-digit decline, suggesting some moderation during the most recent quarter.
http://www.theneweditor.com/index.php?/archives/10738-State-Tax-Collections-See-Third-Consecutive-Double-Digit-Drop-in-3Q-2009.html

[Steven Duke]

10:03 AM on 01/08/2010

Whats your point?

[MajorKong]

10:03 AM on 01/08/2010

I thought you guys wanted that.

"Starve the beast" as Mr. Norquist would say.

[CrankyCurmudgeon]

10:39 AM on 01/08/2010

Most of these idiots don't know what they want. They're like my 6-year-old, adopted daughter. She was clearly abused and now exhibits what is called "oppositional defiance". She can't help herself. It's all she knows when it comes to coping and it manifests itself in the desire to always do the exact opposite of what she's asked to do, or what even makes sense for her to do.

I'm convinced this is a core personality trait of a very large percentage of Republicans. They don't base their positions on principle; they base them on wanting the exact opposite of whatever the Democrats want.