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That’s been my worry since I saw the housing bubble peak in 2005. Historically, declines in housing prices take 3-4 years to bottom, which means we still should be at least half a year away. But after that, the economy doesn’t rebound instantly. It yo-yos for a bit - essentially running horizontal.

My theory is that housing prices will continue to wilt as long as large levels of foreclosures and new home inventories run high. These are not traditional homeowners, and are motivated to slash prices, thus continuing to depress prices.

US News and World Report implies (hopes?) we may be nearing a bottom in housing prices but with a mountain of resets coming in the next few months, it’s difficult to see how a bottom can be seen or even predicted.

I will continue to work from Los Angeles while we work on selling our house, which unfortunately is bad timing as housing prices have taken a bit of a dive around here. Once we have things settled over here, we’ll pack our things and move up to Seattle.

We note your concern in the Annual Report about the potential long term economic risks arising from the rise in house prices in response to interest rates and more liberal loan products in the United States. However, much of the increase in housing prices may be the result of regulatory factors, rather than financial market factors.

Should we be surprised inane arguments are concocted out of thin air? No, not at all. The anti-suburban forces have embarked upon an ideological crusade. They do not care a whit about what happens when their policies drive housing prices through the roof. For them, all that matters is aesthetics. The result is that the price of housing, including interest, has been increased over the last 10 years by the equivalent of as much as 10 years household income in Australian urban areas.

Housing prices are comparatively high in Australia and parents struggle to pay their mortgage, this means that people are forced to work much harder than they would like and I think that overall childhood suffers! Kids end up doing lots of daycare and then after school care and parents then compensate by spending more money on extra activities. It’s a worrying trend as I think kids really need a chance just to be kids and families should have plenty of time to enjoy themselves and each other.

Now let’s look at Palo Alto housing prices. Who’s telling the truth: us ever-ebullient Realtors, or the ever-gloomy doomsayers? Turns out there’s a bit of truth in both sides.

A recent CNN/Money article confirms what we've been seeing: Most people still don't believe that there is a housing slump. We see this mostly in terms of sellers who cannot imagine that housing prices have fallen, thus they set their prices too high and properties remain on the market for an extended period of time.

"What some say??" The housing market here is absolutely ridiculous and the Stelmach government refused to impose rent controls making this city and it's ongoing almost 0% vacancy rate unbelievably hostile to low-income and middle-income renters. Buying in this environment is practically out of the question.

Taxes are going down and no one is going to like it. Here’s why, housing prices are going to fall about 50% from where they are now (we can argue this later). Therefore property taxes will be lower. Our roads will not get fixed, our schools will continue to be over crowed, and the primary reason that people moved to South Florida will be gone…great weather…low cost of living! Don’t fear, they will still be available in Florida; however it will be in other parts of Florida.

I spotted this article from the San Diego Union that follows on my blog concerning the failure of lenders to recover adequately on foreclosed properties. If liquidation auctions become an important mainstay of the real estate market going forward, then this will rapidly and decisively feed through to general housing prices.

Belarus’ energy problems are also having an impact on the rest of the economy. Housing prices have doubled as those with extra rubles have put them into hard assets before an anticipated increase in inflation. Utility prices are rising. Consumer prices have grown about twice as much during the first quarter of 2007 as compared to last year.

In many high cost metropolitan areas housing is now consuming 40 to 50% of a family’s net income, a far cry from the conservative 28% which most financial experts suggest. As we are facing a housing led recession, will consumers adjust their spending habits in accordance with declines in home equity? I argue that they will not because of the Duesenberry Effect and the relationship is not a direct one.

(And to be clear: housing prices are going to fall 25% before they start to rebound. That’s the optimistic scenario, as far as I’m concerned. Housing prices must fall, substantially, before everything comes back into balance — there’s not really any way around the Bad Thing)

we have to move house this month. our landlady has decided that she wants to move back into her house, so she gave us notice a few weeks back. other than having to move, the frustrating part is that everything we are finding available for rent is about twice the amount we currently pay. apparently housing prices have skyrocketed over the course of this last year.

Also, "back in the day," the minimum down payment was 10 percent, with most people putting 20 percent down. With today's higher housing prices, 20 percent represents a huge chunk of cash, and zero-down, 100 percent loans are not uncommon.

I’ve been comparing housing prices in various parts of this valley as well as a few random spots around the country. I haven’t found anywhere as high priced as the Hawaiian island of Kauai but then, I didn’t expect prices that high elsewhere.

After echoing many of my comments in a recent post on Mountain View, saying how local housing prices are supported by supply and demand, and Silicon Valley’s ability to reinvent itself to remain a leader in technology development (agriculture, aerospace, semiconductor, PC, internet, biotech, web 2.0), Rodoni went on to prognosticate about the local real estate market in the coming years.

Walked back to the hotel and somehow ended up at a very cute street where I saw lots of amazing looking little houses. I don’t want to even imagine how much they cost, I’d say easily over a million since housing prices here are just ridiculous.

Congress seemed content to let these most dangerous ARMaments proliferate until they were in nearly every American ZIP code. And the bankers responsible for the proliferation of these ARMs throughout America assured us all that ever-rising house prices would keep the fallout from any WMDs to a minimum.

2- Predicting Housing Prices Based on Historic Data Is Doo Doo. from sellsius° real estate blog

Interesting, isn’t it, how financial considerations can influence so many facets of one’s life? In LA, if you have a steep mortage or rent, you may be forced to drive long distances just to pay for it all, whereas in areas with saner housing prices, things are quite a lot more relaxed.

With housing prices being what they are, I’ll take a gamble and say you don’t have enough space. Me either. this is a pretty darn cool coffee table that doubles as a couch.

Yo found only one other Chicago townhouse development with prices below the $300s, at 53rd and Millard in the West Elsdon neighborhood on the Southwest Side (housing prices are generally lower south and southwest of the city). The Arches, developed by Granite Development Corp and designed by Fitzgerald Associates Architects, is located on the site of the former Ida B. Wells and Madden Park housing projects.

Do you want to look into the crystal ball through the eyes of Federal Reserve Chairman, Ben Bernanke? Will that help you predict mortgage rates and housing prices for 2007? I try to outguess the Fed all the time and I’ve decided that we’ll see a significant decline in short-term interest rates by YE2007.

You can look up housing prices, cost of living, income, racial breakdown, commute times, crime rates, and political affiliation. For example, the median price of a home in Brooklyn is $493,000 (twice the national average) and the average household has 2.8 people with an income of $64,000.

The survey measures median incomes for each market and compares them against housing prices to arrive at “median multiple.” The survey considers a home “affordable” if it costs less than three times a household’s gross income.

Here I am thinking the local economy and housing market is healthy, and now I’m seeing ads paid for by Realtors telling me that home prices have gone up too much and that’s not good. I’m confused here, aren’t housing prices supposed to go up? Microsoft, Boeing, and a cast of a hundred start ups are hiring and growing, so by all appearances the local economy doing well enough. Why don’t I see these kinds of ads when I visit California (which would seem to be a more logical place for a housing bubble that might occur)? What’s the real purpose of the ads?

The population growth of California has slowed for the 6th straight year and many people are blaming the high cost of living. How much of an impact could this have on housing prices?

Riverside Mayor Ron Loveridge is also a SCAG board member and was in charge of this report. As he assesses the explosive growth in his area, he makes the point that has always annoyed me about SCAG:

Speculators who drove up housing prices will move on to speculate on something else.

House price expert Henry Slazenger warned the housing Market that house prices are going to go up, down or stay the same price as last month. This will definitely lead to house prices either changing or staying the same. Economic experts queued up to give the same opinions as last month with exactly half of the experts warning of a house market will be depressed and the other half saying the housing market will be buoyant. When asked would this news about house prices effect his Christmas spending celebrated Magician Paul Daniels said "not a lot".

As a result, foreclosures are on the rise. I don’t pretend to know a lot about the economy or the real estate market but I can’t imagine that a huge increase in foreclosures can be good for anyone: many homeowners now have to sell at a loss to avoid foreclosure and will be forced to either rent or buy a smaller home. Those who enter foreclosure run the risk of serious repercussions on their credit report. And a flood of new homes on the market will drive housing prices down… but who is out there to buy?

Say you sell your big home for $600,000 and immediately buy a condo for $300,000, and housing prices drop 10% over the next 12 months, as some economists forecast. In the condo, you would lose just $30,000 on paper; in the house, you would lose $60,000. The condo savings, however, don’t include expenses, which you incur whenever you move.

The mansion itself totals 62,000 square feet (including basement) with nine bedrooms, a ballroom, media room, art gallery and a 4,100-square-foot conservatory. The 6.5-acre property, with 475 feet of ocean frontage, includes two guest houses, a pool and parking for 40 cars.

It will take a few days for the errors to shake out of the MLS, but October’s Market Basket looks pretty weak: Sales down, prices down — but inventories continue their downward trend.

Demand for property now exists in several forms beyond simply having a place to keep your stuff. There are those who speculate in property, those who accumulate property for rentals and others. The wealth-multiplying effect of mortgage interest tax breaks allows individuals with more property to hide more and more wealth while making more and more money - in turn allowing them to increase their consumption of property. Sit on this trend long enough and what happens? Housing prices begin to rise in accordance with demand, pricing lower income individuals out of the market for equity, while simultaneously increasing the equity held by the wealthy.

The grass is greener in West Chesterfield, in part, because it's a neighborhood where people take obvious pride in the appearance of their community. In part it's greener because housing prices (and property taxes) are low enough that residents have some green left over to spend on the landscaping. You can still find a 3 bedroom, bath-and-a-half single family on what's said to be an oversized lot in the $150s, and even late 90s new construction at the Chatham Club can be had for well under $300K.

In one of my recent posts I took up the question about the effect on consumer spending from a rise in housing prices. My source was an article from The Economist, which discussed this topic from a US perspective and in relation with the slowdown of the US economy. In short; given the recent slump in US house prices the stronger correlation between private consumption and fluctuations in house prices the higher the risk of a real US recession. In a US context the consensus seems to be that the effect from rising house prices on private consumption is relative large and that it has been rising. But what about in other countries and regions?

Housing prices and long commute drives are serious problems in Los Angeles (and elsewhere too, of course) that no one really has an answer too. If the freeways are constant parking lots, it doesn’t really matter if you’re driving a beater or a Bentley. The long delayed plans to extend the L.A. subway from midtown to the Westside via light rail has finally gotten the ok because, among other reasons, the formerly balky homeowners associations finally realized, hey, our homes might be worth 2 million but we can’t get anywhere on surface streets during rush hour.

Declines locally will be slim to none and may have occurred already, experts say.

Quite honestly my wondering is outweighed by the notion that there’s really not alot of affordable housing in California anymore, and why I haven’t seen better paying jobs recently. You know honestly that’s who shoulders all the burden for all these crazy housing prices, the employers. My mother does payroll her work and she was telling me about all the hikes in insurance costs for the employers for liability insurance these last few years, it’s almost quadrupled. That’s where all the money for raises, and houses is going.

If housing prices come in at above inflation, they will sustain historical norms. If they don’t, it will be the first time in decades that inflation has outpaced housing. The national median existing-home price for all housing types is expected to grow 2.8 percent this year to $225,900, with the median new-home price rising only 0.2 percent to $241,400.

New evidence of a housing market slowdown emerged Tuesday - growth in the price of a single family home was just 1.17 percent in the second quarter, a decline of more than one percentage point from the prior quarter when prices grew 2.20 percent.

Atrios has a chart of housing prices going back to 1890. The values are all adjusted for inflation, of course. Take a look, and then tell me: do you think the housing boom of recent years is likely to continue?

Here’s how they slice and dice the data - they talk about the “rate” of increase in foreclosures. Not the percentage of people going into foreclosure. This completely ignores the fact that more people own property in the US than ever before.

But, what is a bubble? I guess, as I understand it, a housing bubble is a little like its namesake: an expanding, inflating, fragile sphere that is full of air and susceptable to popping. If the housing bubble pops, housing prices collapse and fall.

Why not open a fund with a 3-5 year lock up, and simply use the money to invest in distressed real estate in California, Florida, Virginia and Washington, D.C. Granted, I believe that housing prices will continue to decrease, but that is why you place the lock-up. Also, the only reason that the people are foreclosing is a one off event, and has little to do with the value of their property. Real estate is not my area of expertise, so please correct me if I am wrong, but doesn't this seem like a profitable long-term investment?

If that is the case, then–gradually–U.S. housing prices deflate, construction and consumer spending fall, and imports drop. U.S.-made products become more competitive at home, and so manufacturing production and employment for domestic uses rises. The falling real value of the dollar leads to an export boom, which causes export manufacturing to boom as well.

Housing prices are going out of control in the DC area, according to a recent Washington Post article (kudos to Paulo). I was told on Sunday that is is “definitely a renter’s market” but even rent prices are inching up. As I’m currently in the market to rent (though I can’t really afford to live alone), this makes me nervous.

last night was one of those rare summer evenings warm enough to walk around in a tshirt and actually feel like you live in california, not some foggy, wind-swept archipelago in patagonia. but then, it is the hottest the earth has been in 2,000 years, so perhaps perchance this portends better weather for sf. but lets hope not, because it's the bad weather that's kept people away and housing prices in the affordable 3/4 of a million dollars range [insert bitter sarcasm].

An economist in Boston, Alan Clayton Matthews, knows a great deal about the Massachusetts economy. Some years ago, we were talking about the story that out-of-sight housing prices were strangling economic growth—i.e. there was a housing shortage. Alan said that worrying about the housing stock per se was the wrong way to think about things. Potential residents—the Creative Class?—weren’t looking for just housing. They were looking for housing in communities with good schools.

All in all, we have similar challenges to other cities of similar size. The gap between the haves and have-nots is too wide and growing (especially with all of the new development increasing housing prices).

A person from Groton asked "why housing prices in MASS are so high, and why we let developers get rich with the Chapter 40B boondoggle?"

Mr. Patrick - There is no silver bullett to solve this problem. "We don't build enough clustered multi-family rental housing."

Because San Francisco is so ludicrously expensive, at 25 I am looking for two to three random roommates to move in with by July 1st. I can’t afford a studio, I can’t afford a one bedroom, and sweet baby jesus I can’t even afford a TWO bedroom with one other roommate. That’s just how ridiculous it is.

From my viewpoint out here in the countryside, I see the two nearest cities, Lacey and Yelm, growing at a great rate. There are new housing developments everywhere as people seek lower housing prices than those in the big city (Seattle) and the local smaller cities seek to increase their tax revenues. But a common worry is that the available supplies of fresh water from aquifers cannot sustain the rapidly growing populations. The cities are thinking about imposing development moratoria and publicly wonder where the drinking water will come from in the future.

For what it’s worth, part of the reason the housing here is so damned expensive is that we got a big influx (as in, about half the population) from California a few years back. These folks came armed with cash and didn’t need to depend on the local economy to buy their homes. Unfortunately for the rest of us, the local economy took one look at housing prices and snorted its drink all over the place. (Isn’t that a lovely picture?)

He also said housing prices affect gangs just like anyone else, with local members moving to the East Bay and the Central Valley for cheaper housing and commuting to the county to sell drugs.

Well if you are in the market for a home here in southern Maryland you better have a winning lottery ticket. Housing prices in the area have gone through the roof. Even in the average blue collar housing developments the prices have become out of reach for the average Pax contractor.This is just one more aspect of the the cost of living growing out of proportion with respect to the wages earned by contractors. The amount of the increase in home prices is well above the nation average. Click on Maryland and see for yourself on this page.

Here is the crux of the problem. Interest rates keep skyrocketing. Why? Our economy is slowing down, housing prices (at least where I live) are slowing…but the rates…the rates just keep climbing. The fed keeps raising them in hopes of reversing inflation. For nearly two years the fed has been hiking rates. Anyone try to buy a house lately? Did you get an interest only loan? Now you are stuck paying whatever the rates demand. Sure it was a great idea two or three years ago when rates were rock bottom, when our economy was showing signs of recovery from the fiasco of the 2000 election. What, you didn’t think there was a correlation? Please.

This is not just a frivilous little tool for fun’s sake. MySociety plans to use this technology to relate housing prices and travel times and calculate travel costs based on constraints of the users. Prices are often not incorporated into the calculations for estimating the model for choice in transportation and I believe, that this may have broader implications for community demographics and housing availability.

But sometimes, it’s just too expensive to put community first. Housing prices have soared throughout the country. But what if we co-owned a multi-unit home, and moved in with friends? What if we committed to living within walking distance to our friends and church?

Despite signs of a slowdown in sales, housing prices are still rising, and more than expected.

Sure the job pays better, but with those housing prices there’s no propertunity.

I have always been of the mind that Massachusetts may be losing population, but that this is mostly due to a soft job market, not because of high housing prices.

San Diego writer who is questioning whether the experts prediction of a 5% pullback in housing prices is accurate.

Even if prices don’t fall, even if there is no housing bubble about to pop, the cooling real estate market will be felt by many of those who may not be thinking about real estate prices. “It’s going to be very similar to the stock bubble, but even more so. Many who didn’t own stock lost their job when the market plummeted,” said Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, and one of those who believes housing prices have resulted in an asset bubble ripe for a correction.

To make the list, Kiplinger’s says a city had to score well in a variety of areas including housing prices, cost of living, economic vitality, education, health care, the local arts scene and recreational facilities.

Charlottesville is going through a dramatic period of transformation, caused by the region’s quality of life and a general rise in housing prices. This has forced the evolution of the city’s historic neighborhoods, including the Woolen Mills area, just to the east of the downtown mall. In this second in our continuing series on Charlottesville area bloggers, photographer Bill Emory takes us on a tour of the neighborhood. He’s taking a visual inventory of what the area looks like today to make sure it’s still there tomorrow.

Zhou Dunren, deputy director of the Pudong Institute of US Economy, says there “must be something wrong with the housing situation today”. According to his calculation, many citizens have to pay much more than 50% of their monthly income for mortgage payments in order to finance their oversized apartments, a development he calls “consumerism”. He proposes to “slow down”, using a variety of careful measures to allow housing prices to “steadily return to their natural levels”. Shanghai Dai