"This isn't going to be over in a year. Housing prices could be declining
for years and years." -- Robert Shiller, Yale University economics
professor.
"We don't think the market is in that bad of shape. It's just
not in as good shape as it was two years ago." -- John Karevoli, analyst at
DataQuick Information Systems.
Both gentlemen commented for an AP
story on the forecast for housing prices this spring. Shiller, as some may
recall, titled one of his books "Irrational Exuberance," borrowing from a term
used by former Fed Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan in a speech in 1996 shortly
before stock markets around the world plunged.
"Nationally," the AP story
said, "19 major metropolitan markets face a greater than 50 percent chance of
housing price depreciation in the next two years, up from 11 markets a year
ago," according to PMI Mortgage Insurance Company, which publishes regular
predictions. As has been the case for some time now, California and
northeastern U.S. markets dominate the list, leading us once again to advise
that if you have your sites set on a home in the south and you are going to use
the value of your home in the northeast to pay for it, waiting for the markets
to snap back may be a fool's paradise. The gap in housing values north and
south continues to widen.
You can find a list of markets
ranked by risk at USA Today. No fooling.
You have to go pretty deep into the list of metro areas with the highest
rate of sub-prime mortgages delinquencies before you come to an area in the
southeastern U.S. The Wall Street Journal on Thursday (3/29) published
a list of the 30 areas that suffered the highest rate of delinquencies in 2006
compared with the prior year. Cities in California led the list, with
Sacramento at the top with a 10.7% year over year increase. We noted some
surprising weakness in Massachusetts (blue collar Brockton had the third highest
rate at 9.7%).
Melbourne, FL, at #27, was the only area in the southeast to make the top-30 list, which was published in the print edition of the Journal. On an extended list at the Journal’s online web site, other Florida metro areas were listed in the top 50, but you have to go all the way down to 59th place before you find a non-Florida city in the southeast, Danville, VA, not exactly a hotbed for golf communities. The first southeast city, outside of Florida, that we consider to be a lure to golfers and/or retirees is 101st ranked Athens, GA, where delinquencies increased 4.33% year over year. Athens is an up and coming university town that offers a vibrancy and range of living options we’ve come to expect from towns with a major university, in this case the University of Georgia.
Cities in the Carolinas were much farther down the list. The list is available at the Journal's online site.
Melbourne, FL, at #27, was the only area in the southeast to make the top-30 list, which was published in the print edition of the Journal. On an extended list at the Journal’s online web site, other Florida metro areas were listed in the top 50, but you have to go all the way down to 59th place before you find a non-Florida city in the southeast, Danville, VA, not exactly a hotbed for golf communities. The first southeast city, outside of Florida, that we consider to be a lure to golfers and/or retirees is 101st ranked Athens, GA, where delinquencies increased 4.33% year over year. Athens is an up and coming university town that offers a vibrancy and range of living options we’ve come to expect from towns with a major university, in this case the University of Georgia.
Cities in the Carolinas were much farther down the list. The list is available at the Journal's online site.
Page 979 of 1023
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March 2024
March 2024 In This Issue Half Million People Leave Florida. Why? Your Next Home Not Getting Bigger; It’s Getting Better
