A Word of Advice During a Housing Slump: Rent

the nar gets the criticism that they deserve. i hope that after the slump is over the role/status of the nar will be investigated.....read more about the biggest lobbyist david lereah and go to http://davidlereahwatch.blogspot.com/ or to the labels

die nar kommt zurecht endlich unter feuer. ich hoffe das nachdem das debakel beendet ist das die rolle/status der nar noch mal zur untersuchung kommt. mehr zum obersten propagandasprecher lereah unter dem link oben oder den labels.

A promotional spot for the National Association of Realtors came on the radio the other day. The spot, introduced as something called “Newsmakers,” was supposed to sound like a news report, with the association’s president offering real estate advice.

make sure you read this from paper money (including links to some nar commercials) http://tinyurl.com/2ve49o

ihr solltet euch dazu unbedingt den link von paper money ansehen (nar werbung etc)

“This is the best time to buy,” Pat Vredevoogd Combs, the president, said cheerfully. “There’s a lot of inventory in the marketplace. Interest rates are low. It’s a wonderful tax deduction.”
By the Realtors’ way of thinking, it’s always a good time to buy. Homeownership, they argue, is a way to achieve the American dream, save on taxes and earn a solid investment return all at the same time.

That’s how it has worked out for much of the last 15 years. But in a stark reversal, it’s now clear that people who chose renting over buying in the last two years made the right move. In much of the country, including large parts of the Northeast, California, Florida and the Southwest, recent home buyers have faced higher monthly costs than renters and have lost money on their investment in the meantime. It’s almost as if they have thrown money away, an insult once reserved for renters.

Most striking, perhaps, is the fact that prices may not yet have fallen far enough for buying to look better than renting today, except for people who plan to stay in a home for many years. With the spring moving season under way, The New York Times has done an analysis of buying vs. renting in every major metropolitan area. The analysis includes data on housing costs and looks at different possibilities for the path of home prices in coming years.

here the link to the interactive chart http://tinyurl.com/2sdtvd very good!

It found that even though rents have recently jumped, the costs that come with buying a home — mortgage payments, property taxes, fees to real estate agents — remain a lot higher than the costs of renting. So buyers in many places are basically betting that home prices will rise smartly in the near future.

Over the next five years, which is about the average amount of time recent buyers have remained in their homes, prices in the Los Angeles area would have to rise more than 5 percent a year for a typical buyer there to do better than a renter. The same is true in Phoenix, Las Vegas, the New York region, Northern California and South Florida. In the Boston and Washington areas, the break-even point is about 4 percent.....

>with headline like this "Phoenix Home Sales: Worst March in Five Years" highly unlikely.....fantastic charts etc from housing doom http://tinyurl.com/39vn3f !!!

>here the view on the housing futures..../ hier ein blick auf die futures....

thanks to http://macroblog.typepad.com/macroblog/

There is obviously no way to know what home prices will do in the next few years. But there are two big reasons to doubt the real estate boosters who insist that it’s once again a great time to buy.

>it´s preatty claer what prices will do when supply and demnad isn´t well balanced........ so why not write that for years to come it won´t make any sense to buy! i highly recommend the insight from twist about phoenix (see comments)

>eigentlich ist es ziemlich klar was passiert wenn angebot und nachfrage auseinanderdriften. ich denke man hätte hier auch drastischer schreiben können das es auf jahre hinaus null sinn macht zu kaufen. lest dazu bitte unter den kommentaren was twist zu phoenix zu sagen hat.


thanks to http://bubbletrackinggraphs.blogspot.com/

The first is history. After the last big run-up in house prices, in the 1980s, a long slump followed. In the New York area, prices peaked in early 1989 and then fell 9 percent over the next three years, according to government data. (Adjusted for inflation, the drop was much bigger.) Not until 1998 did prices pass their earlier peak.

Keep in mind that the 2000-5 boom was even bigger than the ’80s boom and that house prices on the coasts, according to the official numbers at least, have fallen only slightly so far. So it is hard to imagine that prices will rise 5 percent a year, or another 28 percent in all, over the next five years.

größer/bigger http://tinyurl.com/2rgc3o ( excellent!)

The second reason for skepticism is that buying has never been quite as beneficial as Realtors — and mortgage brokers, home builders and everybody else who makes money off home purchases — have made it out to be. Buyers have to pay property taxes on top of their mortgage, while renters have the taxes included in their monthly rent bill. Buyers also face thousands of dollars in closing costs (and, in Manhattan, co-op charges). Renters, meanwhile, can invest what they would have spent on closing costs and a down payment in the stock market, which hasn’t exactly delivered a bad return over the last 20 years.

And that famous mortgage-interest tax deduction? Yes, it reduces the borrowing costs that come with a mortgage, but it doesn’t eliminate them. Renters don’t face any such borrowing costs......

After hearing that radio spot, I called Ms. Combs and asked her whether she thought there was any chance that she and her fellow Realtors had gone a bit too far in promoting the boom. “I absolutely disagree,” she said, still cheerful. “We help people look at the marketplace.”

So I asked what advice she gave her own clients in Grand Rapids, Mich., where she is an agent. “We often tell people that they need to stay in a house five to six years for it to make sense,” she said.

That’s a nuance that didn’t make it into her “Newsmakers” interview. In Grand Rapids, where the median home costs $130,000, it is probably good advice. In a lot of other places, it may still be too optimistic.