[tkret]

I decided to take another look at the contributions on a thread started last summer on the housing situation....interesting read.

US Home Values Bottomed Out?

[Boomer]

Originally Posted by tkret

I decided to take another look at the contributions on a thread started last summer on the housing situation....interesting read.

US Home Values Bottomed Out?

tkret,

It is weird to see this. I was thinking about this thread the other day. It is one that I got really, really involved in. It hit my hot button because I had been angry for quite a while about what I could see coming.

So many of us could see it coming.

My first rant was about how the fat lady was not even close to singing. And the young couple I talked about who did things right are now even more trapped in that Arizona neighborhood, surrounded by foreclosures. They had played by what they thought were the rules. Nobody told them that there were no rules anymore. And later in the thread I ranted about how I had yelled at Alan Greenspan on a regular basis but he would not listen. I really got into that thread. But I did not want to be right. And neither did the others who said it was bad.

A couple of times recently, I have actually looked closely at the definition of the word treason, trying to decide if the word applies to those who did this to us.

And no matter how careful, how cautious, how conservative we might have been with our personal financial decisions, we are now so interconnected.

"The Way We Were," huh, tkret.

It is surreal.

Boomer

[tkret]

Hi Boomer,

How right you are! During that same time last year, there was another thread on the subject and a fellow-TOTVer disagreed with me and insisted that by the beginning of the Spring of 2009 this would all be behind us. Wishful thinking I suspect.

When I sold my home in AZ last year my neighbor, who was waiting for the turn around to list his home, thought I was nuts to accept a low offer on my home. At the time, I felt that what looked like a low price last year would look like a good decision THIS year. I recently checked out www.zillow.com and noticed that their "zilliow zestimate" for the property is currently 35k less than my selling price.

Housing, like stocks, is no different than any other commodity or product. In the end, it is only worth what the market will offer. When a merchant has too much inventory on his shelf, he does the smart thing to unload it; it puts it "On Sale!". And the current housing market still has too much inventory to unload. We, here in The Villages, are fortunate in that a rush to come here will happen just as soon as the homes in the rest of the country start selling again - regardless of price. Circumstances have finally convinced home sellers to price to market, and when the recession begins to wind down NEXT year and workers are more confident that their jobs are safe, the housing market will stabilize.

To use your words: "The way we were" for sure! thanks

[Russ_Boston]

The bad thing is that I didn't pay more attention to VK's post. He warned about the Freddie and Fannie issue and that it would get much worse. If I only listened maybe my 401K would still have some value