The final scene of the 1991 movie Thelma and Louise showed the road tripping pair gunning the motor and driving over a cliff into the Grand Canyon. It even showed in slow motion the car in free fall. There were no final shots of Thelma and Louise after they drove the car over the lip, but one can imagine that they engaged in one long final embrace of commitment to their friendship.
Well fans, we appear have driven the car of home ownership over the cliff and we are now in free fall into the abyss of foreclosure; so grab your sole mate and get in one long last hug. The market locally pretty much has stalled out for anything other than foreclosure sales. I thought that there was a glimmer of hope last week, which was the first week in a while where the foreclosure sales fell below 70% of the total sales for the week; however, foreclosure came roaring back this week to account for 16 out of 17 sales in the market that I track – 94%.
That is not the only indicator of the depth and breadth of the problem. I also look at things like the number of views that I get on my regular, owner occupied listings on sites like Realtor.com and on the Visual Tours site where people can view the virtual tours that I post. . For whatever reason the bottom fell out during the first full week of February. My listings were cruising along getting 150-200 hits a week until the first full week in February, when views dropped to less than 50 a week. People just stopped looking at houses that aren’t foreclosures. I suspect that some of this was due to people waiting to see what the Federal Government was going to do with the stimulus package – trying to determine if there would be something in there for them.
I’m trying very hard to find a rainbow in all of this – something to point to as providing hope for better times just ahead; however, all I can see so far is the dead canary in the pit that we’ve dug for ourselves. Many economists and most pundits in the real estate industry are now focusing upon 2010, having already written off 2009. Even normally optimistic (many would say overly so) Lawrence Yun, the economist for the National Association of Realtors (NAR), has not predicted a turn around until late 2009 or early 2010.
So what to do, what to do? If you are a seller and can wait 8-10 years, but all means do so. It will take that long for the market to recover most of the value that you’ve lost. If you are a buyer, what are you waiting for? The market has never been better, with low prices and low mortgage rates at the same time. While prices may continue a downward trend for a while longer, everyone is predicting that mortgage rates will have to turn around and rise soon. So, buy now!
If you are a Realtor and not a member of one of the big REO outfits, find a day-job to tide you over this mess. Hopefully you can find something that will allow you to continue to practice real estate on the side. The fact is that, as Realtors, we are in the car that just went over the cliff – the view is great, but the end isn’t going to be pleasant. I can’t even bring myself to say – enjoy the ride. Where’s Mr. Happy when I need him? I gotta go see Little Mary Sunshine for a fix of happiness.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment