Housing slump has struck the hardest in the Middle

[Jularc]

Down the Middle


http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2007/03/18/realestate/keymagazine/18bythenumbers.large1.jpg
“PRICE PEAKS AND VALLEYS” shows real estate prices from November 2005-November 2006. (Sources by Manhattan:
Miller Samuel Inc.; miami-Dade county: Coldwell Banker; chicago: Coldwell Banker)


By ANNA BERNASEK
March 18, 2007

For the past few years we’ve been flooded with national housing-market statistics — chronicling a boom, predicting a bust. But as any homeowner knows, national numbers don’t tell you much about what’s happening in the local housing market. For that you have to go deeper. “What’s striking if you look closer is that different patterns emerge,” says Jonathan J. Miller, chief executive of the New York-based real estate appraisal and consulting firm Miller Samuel Inc. “In New York, for instance, we’re finding bidding wars in some markets and prices dropping in others.”

One way to understand where the housing slump has been hitting is to break the market down according to different price tiers. Judging by local data supplied by brokers (national data don’t provide a detailed breakdown), it seems that so far it has struck hardest in the middle. In Miami-Dade County for instance, where condominiums represent about two-thirds of the market and single-family homes one-third, the average price of a condo in the $600,000 to $800,000 range (the middle of the middle tier) was down 1 percent in November 2006 compared with November 2005. At the high end, with most properties ranging from $2 million to $4 million, the average price rose 15 percent over the same period. And at the lower end, for condos between $400,000 and $600,000, the average price rose 2 percent.

The trend is similar in New York. In Manhattan, with its concentration of extremely high-priced properties, the weak middle has been in the range of $2 million to $4 million. Prices of apartments in that range fell an average of 7 percent in November 2006, compared with the previous November. During the same period, the average price of apartments costing more than $10 million rose by 5 percent, and of those under $1 million more than 8 percent. In Chicago, though, the market has been less variable. The average price of a single-family home in the middle — the $600,000-to-$800,000 range — fell 1 percent in November 2006, compared with the previous year, while the top (homes above $1 million) also dropped 1 percent. But the bottom end, those properties below $400,000, remained flat.

“Weakness in the market has been concentrated in certain segments,” says Mark Zandi, chief economist of Moody’s Economy.com. “We’re not witnessing the entire housing market in metro areas caving in.”

So why is the middle taking the blow? Perhaps because those factors that appear to be causing the slump — overbuilding and concerns about affordability — have weighed most heavily on that sector. Demand in the middle-price tiers has been supported by historically low interest rates and resulting high affordability, but not by significant gains in income. As rates began their rise and affordability began to decrease, the demand for housing in the middle price range began to fall.

Prices at the top, by contrast, have been driven by changes in wealth. In recent years wealth creation in the United States has been spectacular for many at the high end. Fueled by a boom in investment income, low taxes and demand from wealthy foreign buyers, the high end of the housing market has continued to experience strong price gains. “That’s the market where we’re seeing bidding wars,” Miller says. In Miami, for instance, developers are still betting on the high end to perform well. Frank McKinney, a developer of oceanfront properties from Palm Beach to Miami, is going ahead with several single-family home developments priced above $20 million. “If you look at the ultrawealthy class, it’s expanding exponentially,” he says.

High-end markets in cities like Chicago, Denver and San Diego have been less robust, but that’s because the wealthy in those markets tend to be doctors, lawyers and small entrepreneurs, and they haven’t experienced the outsize gains of the very rich who work in fields like finance.

At the low end, the market has held up well nationwide. But there’s an important reason for that, too: the availability of credit. The deciding factor for many first-time home purchasers is not home prices or interest rates; it’s whether they can get a mortgage at all. And aggressive lending has been a booming business, allowing even people with a weak credit history or limited resources to borrow to buy a house or apartment.

That may be about to change, though. A group of regulators, including the Federal Reserve, is expected to announce tighter lending requirements for the sub-prime housing market in coming weeks. “Anyone could get a loan up until the end of last year,” says Zandi, the Moody’s economist. “But that’s changing rapidly. And that will take the wind out of the sails of the lower end of the market.”

So watch out. Not too long from now we may be looking at another soft spot.


Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company (http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/18/realestate/keymagazine/318BytheNumbers.t.html?ref=keymagazine)

[brian_b]

Kind of useless to be comparing Nov 2005 with Nov 2006 here in March 2007. Unless they were intentionally trying to paint a rosier picture than reality that is.

The whole of south florida is toast right now. There is no -1% in just one segment. It's down 20-30% already this year and inventories are ridiculous.

That may be about to change, though. A group of regulators, including the Federal Reserve, is expected to announce tighter lending requirements for the sub-prime housing market in coming weeks. “Anyone could get a loan up until the end of last year,” says Zandi, the Moody’s economist. “But that’s changing rapidly. And that will take the wind out of the sails of the lower end of the market.”

And apparently the subprime implosion that is already happening is lost on this author. Did she not notice the 30 subprime lenders that have gone bust in the last month? Tighter lending requirements? Sorry, that's been taken care of by the market already!

[BTinSF]

Not so bad here on the left coast (especially in the city and inner suburbs):

http://www.sfgate.com/c/pictures/2007/03/16/bu_bay_homes.jpg

Home sales fall -- prices are flat
February survey done before subprime lending crisis, which is expected to make situation worse

Marni Leff Kottle, Chronicle Staff Writer
Friday, March 16, 2007

The Bay Area housing market continued to sputter last month as home prices remained flat and sales fell, continuing a slide of more than two years.

The median in the Bay Area's nine counties rose just 0.3 percent in February to $620,000 from $618,000, according to a DataQuick Information Systems analysis that included single-family houses and condos. The number of homes sold slipped 7.9 percent to 6,305, the lowest volume for any February in 11 years.

The report comes at a critical point as concerns have begun to mount about how rising delinquencies and defaults on mortgages could hurt the residential real estate industry just as the market is poised for its spring boost as more buyers start hunting for houses.

"I think we'll see a pickup in demand, the conditions are ripe for that," said Scott Anderson, a senior economist at Wells Fargo. "But I wouldn't get too optimistic."

Real estate agents say that sales are down in part because there simply aren't enough homes for sale, and the usual increase in listings that comes with spring has yet to start.

The lack of inventory is evident in a weekly printout the San Francisco Association of Realtors puts together of all the homes for sale in the city that are open for agents to tour. By the middle of this month the packet typically starts to grow, as new homes hit the market, said Rick Turley, president of Coldwell Banker's San Francisco-Peninsula division.

"There were 28 pages of property tours in San Francisco when we would have expected 40 pages," Turley said. "Pages are shrinking at a time in which they should be going in the other direction."

DataQuick, a real estate information research firm in La Jolla (San Diego County), doesn't keep track of inventory. The California Association of Realtors, though, notes the extent of the backlog in the Bay Area is such that it would take 3.9 months to sell every home listed on the market at the current pace of sales as of the end of January, compared with 2.9 months in January 2006. The group's inventory data for February is not available.

In Walnut Creek, agents said that the low inventory is leading to quick deals. It took just a week to sell a $895,000 home that she listed March 5, said Joan Pancoast, an agent for Coldwell Banker.

"I was surprised," said Pancoast, who said that an agreement was reached to sell the home at the asking price this week. "I really think it's picking up."

Just when the turnaround is going to occur is difficult to predict. Economists say that DataQuick's latest report doesn't address the possible impact on the market from the turmoil in the mortgage industry.

In the past two weeks a series of events -- including a report from the Mortgage Bankers Association that showed a surge in late payments among high-risk, or subprime, borrowers and the implosion of the subprime lender New Century Financial Corp. -- have cast doubts on the possibility of a quick rebound in the housing market.

"The problems with the subprime loans have nothing to do with today's sales numbers," said David Shulman, a senior economist with the UCLA Anderson Forecast. "The subprime meltdown is two weeks old. In all likelihood, what's going on in the subprime market will make things much worse in terms of both volume and prices."

Across the Bay Area, home prices jumped the most in Marin County, climbing 3.8 percent to $829,000 for a home or condo, according to DataQuick. The greatest price erosion occurred in Contra Costa County, where the median home price dropped 5.5 percent to $537,000.

Prices fell most steeply region-wide for new homes, as builders continued to slash prices to clear inventory. The median price for a new single-family house fell 13 percent from a year earlier to $595,000, according to DataQuick.

E-mail Marni Leff Kottle at mkottle@sfchronicle.com.

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/03/16/BUG9OOM59A1.DTL

[brian_b]

Not so bad here on the left coast (especially in the city and inner suburbs):

From what I've seen and been hearing, San Diego and the Inland Empire are in pretty bad shape, with Orange County in danger of losing it too. Northern California is not in trouble, but it's too early in this game to know if they'll stay that way.

[brickell]

The whole of south florida is toast right now. There is no -1% in just one segment. It's down 20-30% already this year and inventories are ridiculous.


Inventories are ridiculous, but I have yet to see 20-30% drops anywhere here. Where do you get that from? The market isn't as hot as it was, but it's still chugging along. There is no toast.

[BTinSF]

From what I've seen and been hearing, San Diego and the Inland Empire are in pretty bad shape, with Orange County in danger of losing it too. Northern California is not in trouble, but it's too early in this game to know if they'll stay that way.

Everywhere in CA it seems the problem is worst in new construction with long commutes. People are still willing to pay up to be in a convenient location but not for a mcmansion in the middle of nowhere. San Diego may be a bit of an exception because my impression is that they had more South Florida-style speculative building and a more-rapid price rise than other urban areas. There has been very little of that in San Francisco, for example, because it is simply too hard to pass through the required hoops to put up a building resulting in a persistent unsatisfied demand

[brian_b]

Inventories are ridiculous, but I have yet to see 20-30% drops anywhere here. Where do you get that from? The market isn't as hot as it was, but it's still chugging along. There is no toast.

Asking prices have not dropped much, but they are so far out of reality that when a seller is lucky enough to find a buyer, it is increasingly common that the appraisal doesn't come anywhere close to the agreed upon price that the loan is not funded and the deal falls through. Why do you think inventory levels have gone through the roof?

Evidence is piling up and getting into the media. I'll dig some stuff up, give me a couple hours :)

[brian_b]

Everywhere in CA it seems the problem is worst in new construction with long commutes. People are still willing to pay up to be in a convenient location but not for a mcmansion in the middle of nowhere. San Diego may be a bit of an exception because my impression is that they had more South Florida-style speculative building and a more-rapid price rise than other urban areas. There has been very little of that in San Francisco, for example, because it is simply too hard to pass through the required hoops to put up a building resulting in a persistent unsatisfied demand

San Francisco is indeed a different animal; however it is a bit risky to assume that it won't be affected. If I were involved in the housing market there I'd be very cautious and be on the lookout for signs of trouble.

[BTinSF]

San Francisco is indeed a different animal; however it is a bit risky to assume that it won't be affected. If I were involved in the housing market there I'd be very cautious and be on the lookout for signs of trouble.

The only thing I own is my condo and I need a place to live. My main interest is in new buildings that may or may not get built. There's at least 6 new towers, several supposed to get underway this year, that I'd love to see built, but I consider them iffy right now. Perhaps the "canary in the coal mine" is The Infinity project:

http://img256.imageshack.us/img256/3729/infinitytowers5xu6.jpg

This is one of the three newest, glitziest projects in town and I don't know how sales are going. It's main rival, One Rincon Hill, sold 90% of its units almost as soon as they went on the market--when the building was still almost 2 years from completion (I don't think sales have yet started on the third major highrise under construction, The Millenium Tower). But if The Infinity is having good sales, then I see no reason the other highrise buildings wouldn't proceed.

[brian_b]

Yeah, I hope that downtown Chicago stays strong enough to see the best towers built!

Anyway, here's some links from just the past 3 weeks about south Florida and the troubles they are having. No single article paints a picture, it's merely a brush stroke. But you can start to see the outline...

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/10/business/10real.html?ex=1331182800&en=442d8daf6bf56cac&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/cash/story/0,,2030972,00.html

http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/local/southflorida/sfl-ztradinghouses12mar12,0,5027208.story?coll=sfla-home-headlines

http://cbs4.com/local/local_story_073103111.html

http://www.palmbeachpost.com/business/content/business/epaper/2007/03/14/a1d_mortgage_0314.html

http://www.floridatoday.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070315/NEWS01/703150337/1006

http://www.sun-sentinel.com/business/local/sfl-ybrealraf19mar19,0,1569715.column

http://www.sun-sentinel.com/business/local/sfl-zsubprime20mar20,0,764904.story?coll=sfla-business-front

[Frisco_Zig]

Everywhere in CA it seems the problem is worst in new construction with long commutes. People are still willing to pay up to be in a convenient location but not for a mcmansion in the middle of nowhere. San Diego may be a bit of an exception because my impression is that they had more South Florida-style speculative building and a more-rapid price rise than other urban areas. There has been very little of that in San Francisco, for example, because it is simply too hard to pass through the required hoops to put up a building resulting in a persistent unsatisfied demand


Very anecdotal but what I hear from my friends in San Mateo seems to agree with you. The condos are flat or slightly declining but the guy I know trying to buy a SFH in the nice parts of San Mateo for around 1.2 million or less is still running into people over bidding

I think its clear that SFH in SF and the Pennisula are highly valued these days. I imagine in 50 years it will be even more so. Even in San Mateo now (where I grew up) there is really only room now for new condos and townhomes. It is quite a luxury now to have privacy and a backyard and will only increase in desirablility over the next decades

[Frisco_Zig]

The only thing I own is my condo and I need a place to live. My main interest is in new buildings that may or may not get built. There's at least 6 new towers, several supposed to get underway this year, that I'd love to see built, but I consider them iffy right now. Perhaps the "canary in the coal mine" is The Infinity project:

http://img256.imageshack.us/img256/3729/infinitytowers5xu6.jpg

This is one of the three newest, glitziest projects in town and I don't know how sales are going. It's main rival, One Rincon Hill, sold 90% of its units almost as soon as they went on the market--when the building was still almost 2 years from completion (I don't think sales have yet started on the third major highrise under construction, The Millenium Tower). But if The Infinity is having good sales, then I see no reason the other highrise buildings wouldn't proceed.

These projects could pencil easily in a declining market if not for inclusionary requerments, fee exactions and all of the red tape in SF. This is why only high end stuff gets built and why even a slight downturn in the market means nothing will get built. You need a red hot market to make a profit in SF.

[BTinSF]

^^^Yes, but to some extent it's a guessing game. Buildings started this year will be ready for occupancy in 2009. Builders who only start projects in boom years risk having them on the market in a bust, whereas starting to build in a bust could put the building on the market in much better times 2 years from now. We'll see whose got guts.

[someone123]

Those graphs are awful.

[WonderlandPark]

Those graphs are awful.

Agreed, that is what caught my eye. dreadful info design.

[brian_b]

Excellent piece in the SF Chronicle. Doesn't single out any particular area however:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/03/20/EDG79ONVUI1.DTL&hw=sean+olender&sn=001&sc=1000

[BTinSF]

^^^It is an unusually good article for the Chron, but I think that's explained because it is an "opinion" piece by someone who probably isn't a Chron staffer. I do think, though, that it's less clear than the article suggests who actually "owns" most of the collateralized subprime mortgages out there.

I sure looks like the big boys on Wall St. don't know because they have been slamming the stocks of a range of companies over the issue, then changing their minds and slamming some other group. First it was the obvious--companies like Century Financial who make subprime loans (and, in Century's case, kept too many of them on their books). Then it was companies like Goldman Sachs because they are ones who collaterilize them--buy them from the company that made the loan and repackage them as securities. It was thought that perhaps they too kept too many of them as in-house investments or, if not that, perhaps they didn't unload the collateralized securities in time.

In the last week or so, though, the Goldmans and Merrill Lynchs have been let off the hook a bit. Now everyone seems to be just holding their breath about whether the Alt A loans will begin to submerge along with subprime and who turns out to be holding the hot potatoes. In many cases, as the article suggests, it will be pension funds and college endowment accounts and other insitutional investors. But, still, nobody really knows for sure.

By the way, the article mentions Allen Greenspan. Who else remembers that shortly before the end of his tenure as Fed Chairman, Allen lectured us all about how much money we could save if only we would stop opting for those expensive 30-year fixed mortgages and just get adjustable rate loans?

[BTinSF]

More on the subject--this time from the Wall Street Journal:

Housing Bubble: Toil and Trouble Follows Pattern
March 5, 2007; Page C1

So much for once burned, twice shy.

Seven years after the stock-market bubble busted, the troubles in the housing market look strikingly familiar. In fact, everything is going according to the textbook -- the textbook in this case being Charles Kindleberger's 1978 classic, "Manias, Panics, and Crashes."

Mr. Kindleberger found speculative bubbles tended to follow similar patterns. First, there is some "displacement" -- such as the development of the Internet or a prolonged period of ultralow interest rates -- that radically improves the outlook for some area of the economy. People take advantage of the opportunity, fueling a boom that is fed by progressively easier access to cash. At the height of the bubble, there's "pure speculation"; assets are bought to quickly sell them again at a higher price -- day-trading in 2000, condo-flipping more recently, tulips long ago.

The speculation eventually runs its course and in the ensuing downturn, swindles come to light. That leads to "revulsion." Lines of credit dry up and regulators, Sarbanes-Oxley style, rush to shut the door of the empty cow barn. In the worst cases, selling panics follow.

Revulsion is where housing appears to be.

Early February, the Federal Reserve reported a sharp increase in the number of banks tightening mortgage-lending standards. On Tuesday, Freddie Mac -- whose main business is repackaging mortgages into mortgage-backed securities -- said it was tightening standards on purchases of risky, subprime mortgages. On Friday, banking regulators proposed stricter mortgage guidance.

As Mr. Kindleberger showed, financial shenanigans in housing are coming to light. A jump in "early defaults," where borrowers stop paying shortly after taking out their mortgage, stems in part from questionable lending practices.

Jon Goodman, a Boulder, Colo., real-estate lawyer with Frascona, Joiner, Goodman & Greenstein, says he has seen dozens of cases where buyers tried to buy a house for more than it was worth in return for a kickback from the seller. The buyer might pay $500,000 for a house that is really worth $450,000 and get $50,000 back from the seller. The kickback gets used as a kitty to make mortgage payments while the buyer waits for someone to buy the house for more than he paid. Works great in a rising market; horribly in a falling one.

It is too early to know the extent of such gimmickry or how tough lenders and regulators will get. But it isn't too early to wonder why, so shortly after the 2000 bust, a bubble cycle repeated itself.

In early 2004, then-Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan said he thought "we don't have to worry much about the emergence of bubbles for a while because it takes a number of years for the trauma of the collapse to wear off." Back then, of course, the Fed's ultralow interest rates were helping to feed the housing boom.

Mr. Kindleberger documented that bubbles frequently come not long after the previous bust. The 1800s included repeated bubbles in canal and rail securities in the U.S. and abroad. Housing wasn't the only place where low rates bred an easy money culture. Emerging-market stocks and bonds, corporate debt and buyouts come to mind.

Write to Justin Lahart at justin.lahart@wsj.com1

URL for this article:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB117306090282726601.html

[BTinSF]

This just gave me a chuckle:

OUTSIDE THE BOX
What goes boom must go bust
Commentary: U.S. housing collapse comes as liquidity dries up
By Scott Reamer
Last Update: 12:01 AM ET Mar 21, 2007

Scott Reamer works at Vicis Capital, a multi-strategy hedge fund in NYC.

NEW YORK (MarketWatch) -- Mortgage marketing campaigns have been changed from "Money? Free!" to "Last four years of W2's - notarized!", font sizes have been reduced in print ads, get-rich-on-real-estate infomercials have been moved from prime time to 2am, your brother in law has finally clammed up. Indications, all, that something has changed - really changed - in the housing market.
Official news over the last several weeks that lenders from Countrywide (CFC) to Freddie Mac (FRE) would be tightening their lending standards in the subprime sector of mortgage originations positively begs the question: what's changed?
But before we can attempt to limn even the faint outlines of the answer, we need to countenance the conclusion that such question asking as: "Do you have an income?" and "Can I see proof?" has one and only one effect on credit supply and demand: a decrease.
And that means liquidity is drying up in the mortgage market.
The particular exit strategy of someone-will-buy-it-from-me-at-a-higher-price rests squarely on the next Mensa reject wrestling the required funds from a banker before he can exercise his herding instinct, sate his brain stem, and flood his circulatory system with endorphins. And if those bankers are now equipped with stethoscopes as they claim, that next buyer won't ever get his golden ticket. Which means someone is stuck with $2,350 per month in maintenance, taxes, insurance, and mortgage costs on an 'investment property.' And $3,775 when the re-set comes in late 2007.
When home prices stopped going up 12-18 months ago, the frustration was palpable but hardly fear inducing. Timelines were stretched for ROI, 'we'll use it as a vacation home' rationales started flooding forth, and travertine backsplashes suddenly went wanting. But things are different now, measurably so. And that difference is not just that the demand for credit to speculate on housing has declined. It's that supply is now contracting. And when a credit cycle starts seeing supply contract (liquidity declining), all sorts of things start to happen: speculation gets robbed to pay a tax to prudence.
But, really, what has changed? What has really changed?
It's not as if bankers don't have money laying around to extend or sweeten the terms of the new loans these home speculators now need. Hell, the Fed and Treasury just need to print it into existence. And certainly Senator Dodd has played his cards: he thinks Congress should help 2.2 million home owners who are getting squeezed from buying a home they couldn't afford in the first place (and apparently who are not English speakers also because existing federal regulations demand that every possible term and contingency in lending be laid out for borrowers).
So you have the Federal government's legislative AND executive branches (if you know which branch the Federal Reserve comes under please email me) wanting to help these folks. But, still, liquidity wanes.
Why? Time preference. Specifically aggregate time preference.
The bankers who sign the checks, the appraisers who value the property, the retiree who speculates on the property, the investment bank that pools the mortgages and tranches them, the rating agency that rates those pools, the other investment bank that securitizes the tranches, the rating agency that rates those securitized pools, the other investment bank that sells insurance on the securitized tranches, the pension/hedge fund that buys the pools/tranches/securitizations. All have the means to keep the game going - to effectively go back in time to the halcyon days of 2004 or the even the salad days of 2005. But that's not what's happening.
And it's not going to happen either. Whomever it was that first came to his/her senses in this credit madness is moot; it's the fact that his/her action -- that mortgage banker, that CDO trader, whoever -- catalyzed the opposite trend toward probity. After an orgy of credit-based risk taking, incented in almost every conceivable fashion by monetary and social institutions, the negative feedback effects of reduced liquidity are almost certain now to run their course in the opposite direction with potentially equal (or greater) costs. Booms turn to busts not because something 'happened.' They turn to bust because there is simply no other path.
It is said that when men go mad they do so all at once. But they gain their sanity slowly and one by one.
That credit supply is being tightened means we've passed the 'one-by-one' stage and we're approaching 'all-at-once.'

Source: http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/commentary-goes-boom-must-go/story.aspx?guid=%7b392611D8-79F5-4101-A9B4-200DC62D1868%7d&siteid=myyahoo&dist=myyahoo&print=true&dist=printTop

[brian_b]

By the way, the article mentions Allen Greenspan. Who else remembers that shortly before the end of his tenure as Fed Chairman, Allen lectured us all about how much money we could save if only we would stop opting for those expensive 30-year fixed mortgages and just get adjustable rate loans?

Oh, I remember all right.

This guy should have retired about 6 years earlier than he did. Those last 6 years will forever cloud his legacy, when this mess is all done and sorted out.

[dave8721]

Yeah, I hope that downtown Chicago stays strong enough to see the best towers built!

Anyway, here's some links from just the past 3 weeks about south Florida and the troubles they are having. No single article paints a picture, it's merely a brush stroke. But you can start to see the outline...

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/10/business/10real.html?ex=1331182800&en=442d8daf6bf56cac&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/cash/story/0,,2030972,00.html

http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/local/southflorida/sfl-ztradinghouses12mar12,0,5027208.story?coll=sfla-home-headlines

http://cbs4.com/local/local_story_073103111.html

http://www.palmbeachpost.com/business/content/business/epaper/2007/03/14/a1d_mortgage_0314.html

http://www.floridatoday.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070315/NEWS01/703150337/1006

http://www.sun-sentinel.com/business/local/sfl-ybrealraf19mar19,0,1569715.column

http://www.sun-sentinel.com/business/local/sfl-zsubprime20mar20,0,764904.story?coll=sfla-business-front

So have you admitted yet that your "down 20-30%" figure was completely made up and completly wrong yet? SoFla condo prices have been pretty much stagnant (with actually a small increase) from 2006 into 2007 which is hardly "down 20-30%" but i guess letting reality get in the way of media perception is never a good idea right?

Wish you were right though, then maybe I could afford something (love how they view $600k to $800k as the "middle range").

[passdoubt]

In Miami-Dade County for instance, where condominiums represent about two-thirds of the market and single-family homes one-third
I know it's off-topic, but I'm amazed by this statistic. Is this only for new construction, or is this total units on the market? In Philadelphia I can't imagine more than 5% of the market being condos. Even in New York, most people don't live in condos. Does anybody have percentage of units on the market that are condominiums by city/metro?

[brian_b]

So have you admitted yet that your "down 20-30%" figure was completely made up and completly wrong yet? SoFla condo prices have been pretty much stagnant (with actually a small increase) from 2006 into 2007 which is hardly "down 20-30%" but i guess letting reality get in the way of media perception is never a good idea right?

Wish you were right though, then maybe I could afford something (love how they view $600k to $800k as the "middle range").

I'm not admitting being wrong at all. Asking prices in places such as south Florida are detached from reality - they should be called wishing prices. The median listing price hasn't changed much, but at this point it's irrelevant.

There's plenty of evidence that real prices have dropped. If you don't want to see it, that's up to you. Good luck on your home search.

[brickell]

I know it's off-topic, but I'm amazed by this statistic. Is this only for new construction, or is this total units on the market? In Philadelphia I can't imagine more than 5% of the market being condos. Even in New York, most people don't live in condos. Does anybody have percentage of units on the market that are condominiums by city/metro?


According to cencus 2000 it was at 45% in multi-family units. I believe they're referring to what's currently on the market. Not really sure though.