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Housing Market: Snow Jobbed

The death watch that made Terri Schiavo look like a sprinter has come to an end, as John Snow meekly submits to the headsman's axe:

Snow, the former head of railroad giant CSX Corp. who has a Ph.D. in economics, has been Treasury secretary since February 2003. His departure has been rumored for more than a year. Bush praised Snow for showing "strong leadership."

Much like Mike Brown and the heckuva job he did, of course. What's interesting is that although Snow's replacement, Henry Paulson, is a multimillionaire and longtime Bush ally, he's also a proponent of certain inconvenient truths about the environment. Wonder how THIS confirmation battle's gonna go....

Back to Snow. There's a eulogy from Reuters about Snow's tireless salesmanship in the effort to convince us that things were really okay with the economy, as long as we used houses like ATMs and bought property with no-doc loans and no financing. How did he do?

Not so hot:

There are 122 million housing units in this country. In Gallup polling data from last month, 11 percent of Americans were "very worried" about being able to pay their rent, mortgage or other housing costs — that number has been stable in annual surveys each April since 2001. However, 27 percent said they were very or moderately worried; the previous range had been 22 to 25 percent.

Hey, if they didn't buy it in China, there's no way they were gonna buy it here. :) Good riddance to bad rubbish.

Posted at 01:56 PM | TrackBack

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Buying And Selling: The Great Divide

Forbes has the latest rundown on the most expensive homes in America. What's amazing about this is that the prices are not only beyond the reach of virtually every normal person in the country, but they're so absurdly priced that even your average millionaire might not be able to swing it:

"You need to have $800 million to see it," says David Barrett, who represents the San Francisco house for Warwick Properties Group. "And at least once a week, we get a prospective buyer who has that."

Who ARE these people that can drop $800 million and yet still worry about being outbid, I wonder? It's like pondering the federal deficit...the numbers are just so cartoonishly huge that you can't even be envious.

The march to wring every last bit of development money out of overpriced areas continues apace, and good ol' grungy Hollywood is no exception, it seems:

The Broadway Hollywood is nearly sold out after just two weekend sales events, with prices from the high $500,000 range to $3 million.

"What you have is people that maybe two years ago would never have thought about buying in Hollywood are now literally fighting amongst themselves for units," said Kate Bartolo, vice president of development for The KOR Group.

This is a great triumph for urban renewal and New Urbanism, but at $2400 a month, I better be getting a personal pedicure, ball wax, and hand-fed truffles with my utilities. :)

I am often left to wonder about the process of buying in such overheated markets. If there are always buyers willing to pay at these prices, where do they come from? What kind of moves did they make to pay those prices? Were they all careful, smart, and wise investors, putting money aside in high-yield savings accounts, diversified stock portfolios, and not following the trends of everyone telling them what was hot and what wasn't?

To coin a phrase, sadly, no:

Today, foreclosure looms over their $129,000 home. That’s a problem facing a growing number of Americans, who are finding themselves one crisis away from financial ruin. RealtyTrac, an industry organization that maintains a nationwide database of foreclosures, says mortgage defaults between January and March of this year numbered 323,102 compared with 188,122 during the same period last year — an increase of 72 percent.

This is the inevitable outcome of a vast divide between people who throw money around like raking leaves in October, and the legions who believe that there is no other way to live than just like that--acquisition for acquisition's sake. A home as a cash machine, not a place to live and grow old in. The end result is shattered dreams, wrecked credit, acres of wasted land, and short-term profit exchanged for long-term smarts.

It'll get better, but it's going to get a lot worse first. Oh, and I'd give someone else a ball wax to get a home for $129,000 in D.C. If it's that bad out in the sticks, imagine how much worse it is in the urban centers...

Posted at 08:04 PM | TrackBack

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Buying and Selling: The Fall of Fannie

AlterNet has a fascinating post that digs deep into the craziness of the Fannie Mae scandal. It's a good look at why there needs to be absolute transparency and rigid oversight of any "institution," particularly one that has expanded so far beyond its intended purpose as Fannie (and her sibling Freddie) has. The comments are well worth reading in particular:

Let's imagine a world without Fannie Mae, which functions as a final guarantor, as it were. Getting a home loan would be a lot harder for most people. In fact, the huge expansion of homeowners after WWII would probably not have occurred at all. And foreclosures would be more common now.

Why do we care? Well, there's the economic security that owning a home provides (as a source of equity). Many people would still be renting and that would concentrate power in rural areas especially. We'd probably have a system more like many countries where a few landowners own huge tracts since smaller landowners wouldn't be able to finance a purchase, or borrow against the home in hard times.

It makes me wonder why Bush and his cronies are so dead set on privatizing Fannie, for if history is clearly any indication, we're hardly going to get more in the way of clear oversight and honest accounting from these jokers.

Still, as suspicious as I am of the motives involved in this investigation, I can't deny that the level of greed, arrogance, and downright shadiness involved in this mess absolutely needs to go. There's an absolutely brutal takedown of Fannie's practices courtesy of the Affordable Housing Institute:

If you were large governmentally-advantaged institutions, often accused of being a duopoly, each under heavy political fire for massive accounting restatements, risky financial practices, dubious internal procedures, extravagant executive bonuses, and questionable historic payment policies, now trying to demonstrate contrition, would you use two individuals from the same lobbying firm?

Ouch. :)

What we need to do is strip down the practice to its absolute basics and let government do what it's built to do: provide basic services for those in need and grant them a "starting point" to go the distance in terms of lending, borrowing, and buying for a home. That Fannie and Freddie are unworkable in their current configurations is beyond dispute, but that we need something to offer affordable housing to those who would otherwise be "renters for life" is equally so. (Tip o' the derby to Housing Finance for the link.)

Posted at 02:44 PM | TrackBack

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Housing Market: The Notorious M.A.E

It's a rough day to be working for (or invested in) Fannie Mae, that's for sure:

WASHINGTON - Employees at mortgage giant Fannie Mae manipulated accounting so that executives could collect millions in bonuses as senior management deceived investors and stonewalled regulators at a company whose prestigious image was phony, a federal agency charged Tuesday.

The blistering report by the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight, the product of an extensive three-year investigation, was issued as the government-sponsored company struggles to emerge from an $11 billion accounting scandal.

I certainly have nothing against any sort of oversight or smackdown of this egregious level of corruption, but you gotta wonder why Bush's DOJ is so hot to trot against Fannie and Freddie as opposed to, well, everything else. :) The idea of anyone working for John Snow calling for regulation and oversight is just hysterical.

Bubble Meter helpfully provides links to the full Fannie Mae report and press release for your reading pleasure.

Perhaps doing his part to prove that he's 2 legit 2 quit, Freddie Mac's CEO had some interesting things to say about the current market recently:

But Syron said he does not necessarily think housing prices "are peaking."
The areas at greatest risk are those where buyers have been buying residential properties with no plans to reside in them, but rather as a speculative investment, he said, citing resort areas with a fast-growing supply of condominiums as particularly vulnerable.

There's nothing there that bubble watchers don't already know, but it's gratifying to see insights like this making it into the lexicon of the "common wisdom."

Of course, Ben Bernanke is still offering mea culpas by the pound for deviating from what everyone wanted to believe, so take that with a grain of salt when you ride 4 your dead homiez. :)

Posted at 02:14 PM | TrackBack

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Buying And Selling: Who Do You Trust?

You don't have to be a fan of Freakonomics (or this blog, for that matter) to know that the issue of trusting your realtor is a hot one. No serious training, the all-encompassing drive to push for sales, lack of oversight--it's a real bitches' brew, all right.

One way enterprising brokerages have been combatting this is putting their stats out there for everyone to read. HomeGain, HomeThinking, and many other sites like them flip the script--instead of searching Web-based listings for valuations, properties, and what not, you put your property up there and the sites find you an appropriate realtor.

Do these work? I, myself, have never used them, so I can't say. It seems that the drive for information is pushing people further into the welcoming arms of the Internets, but people still rely chiefly on word-of-mouth and referrals when it comes to choosing a realtor. Still, enterprising agents like Echo Farrell seem to be combatting the malaise of the post-bubble housing market by getting proactive. It's not like she has a choice--Phoenix ain't exactly swingin' these days--but the more realtors push to set themselves apart from the pack, the more they're going to be willing to work to get your sale. And in a buyer's market, that ain't nothing but a good thing.

(Ok, there's proactive, and then there's proactive, but still...)

Of course, if you were to go solely on the comic stylings of David Lereah, it'd be a miracle if you didn't ditch all your cash and buy a ton of gold bricks to live under for the next few years. Have a look at this latest bilge:

I'm getting tired of all these doomsayers. We live in houses, and our houses are not going to crash. This isn't the stock market.... Local economies are relatively healthy. There's job creation -- this isn't a scenario where bubbles burst. Can there be one or two or three or several local markets where prices actually go down? Yes. But to generalize for 30 markets or the whole real estate marketplace -- that's absurd.

Take a deep breath, and inhale that wonderful smell of bear markets and bull &^!t. :)

Posted at 09:28 PM | TrackBack

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Buying And Selling: Arbitrate This!

Courtesy of ConsumerAffairs.Com, we have the news that a Texas judge has ruled that KB Home's arbitration contracts are unenforceable:

The settlement means that all binding arbitration clauses in KB Home agreements are invalid and homeowners can now sue KB Home in a court of law rather than being forced into binding arbitration over construction defects.

Laredo District Court Judge Solomon Casseb approved the class action settlement that prohibits KB Home from requiring any past, present or future customers to consent to mandatory binding arbitration in the settle of warranty claims.

This is fantastic news. The real estate world is replete with tales of angry homeowners who have been forced into expensive, pointless, and horribly biased arbitration procedures to get any kind of redress for breaches of contract. KB Home, in particular, has been a major player on that front, so anything that smacks them makes me happy. Ah, I remember the glory days of KB Homes Sucks well....

Here's a great article that explains the pros and cons of arbitration. The problem with "alternative dispute resolution" is that it's often every bit as costly as a traditional legal settlement, and much more of the costs are borne by the consumer, with a far lower chance of redress. And these clauses are tucked deeply into almost every service agreement you can think of these days. Major corporations know that most people don't read the fine print, and don't realize what rights they're giving up.

HOBB has a list of list of home builders that include binding arbitration in their contracts. (WARNING: I make no claim as to the accuracy of this list. You are encouraged to investigate for yourself.)

You have the right as an American citizen to have your grievances heard in a court of law. As silly and frivolous as our lawsuit-happy culture can be at times, I'd rather have that than people suffering in silence with no way to seek justice for wrongs done to them. Remember, if buying a home of any kind, READ THE ENTIRE CONTRACT LIKE YOUR LIFE DEPENDED ON IT. Because if the builder or realtor slips something in there that ends up screwing you, it just might be the case.

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Housing Market: What Goes Up...

Oh, man, where do we start today? The Dow dropped like a thirteen-year-old's testicles on the CPI increase, even without (as they constantly remind us) factoring in food and energy prices. Speaking of the CPI, said index also hit a three-month-high today. In case you were wondering how this affects housing:

One of the things the Fed will be keeping close tabs on is how energy prices affect inflation and economic activity.

Energy prices can make inflation worse. They also can crimp overall economic activity by forcing consumers and consumers to pare their spending and investment. Or, high energy prices can result in both scenarios — which would be an tricky position for the Fed to deal with. To counter inflation, the Fed would be inclined to boost interest rates. To treat economic weakness, the Fed would want to leave rates alone or in more serious cases, lower them.

Now, couple this with the continuing rises in interest rates (as eloquently explained by Jared Bernstein over at the American Prospect), and you have a recipe for disaster if you're stretched on your payments in any way.

Some people are just choosing to toss the keys away and let the bank take their home back, as evidenced by the weed growth around foreclosed homes in places like Michigan. Interestingly, Inman tells us that foreclosure rates dropped in April. Perhaps the warm weather got more buyers out in specific regions of the country.

Other homeowners are hearing "buyer's market" and are literally throwing the kitchen sink into the mix in order to get people closing the deal on their property. And realtors are becoming equally aggressive--thanks to a nice little find from a comment on Ben Jones' blog, I think we've found the most (ahem) nakedly honest realtor yet, in Wendy Heath:

I'd make a comment about "buying that for a dollar," but it's Long Beach, so I'd probably have to spend two.

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Buying And Selling: Rewriting History

Another sunny press release from the REALTORS on how things are looking up in the markets, even as prices continue to cool. Bankrate's Greg McBride wastes no time taking them apart, particularly the usage of nonsequential data to gauge home sale prices. It's also worth noting that I can't find the original press release on the NAR Web site now--irony of ironies.

Another interesting example of the disconnect between statistics and market can be found in this piece about the slowing housing market in New Jersey:

Meanwhile, sales prices of existing homes were up by at least 10 percent in several metropolitan areas that include parts of New Jersey, including Atlantic City, the area that includes Wayne, N.J. and White Plains N.Y., greater Philadelphia and Trenton.

One analyst said the new data are a bit deceptive because they include deals that were negotiated last year.

You catch that? They were using data from 2005--housing's peak year in this cycle--for sales figures well into the second quarter of 2006. Is that shiesty or what?

Still and all, most media outlets are catching the main point--that the market fire has cooled off. No matter how the NAR attempts to clothe, cloak, or couch the data, people know what's up.

Now, of course, the question becomes what we do about it....

Posted at 03:35 PM | TrackBack

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Housing Market: Information Wants To Be Free

If there's an upside to the housing market sagging like Bea Arthur's bustline, it's that the desires of homeowners and buyers to be more informed, knowledgeable, and savvy about the ins and outs of real estate has led to an explosion of Web-based real estate information.

Inman, for instance, tells us that traffic to Web-based real estate sites has been skyrocketing of late. D.C. uber-blogger Rob Goodspeed has a great round up of District-based blogs and Web sites that cover real estate. And, of course, you have sites like Zillow, ZipRealty, Google Base, and Craigslist that provide the user with the tools they need to make the transaction themselves--with varying degrees of success.

I couldn't go without mentioning the many fantastic bloggers and writers who have blazed an incredible trail in providing (to coin our own blog's slogan) "news, analysis, and opinion" for millions of real estate-minded folks around the country, if not the world. Everyone from Bubble Meter to Ben Jones to Marinite has done their part (and then some) to bring the issue of overvalued housing and inflated markets to the public's attention. I'm humbled to be in their ranks, because they do amazing work (for little or no pay), and keep people informed in ways the traditional media just can't or won't.

This current bubble resembles the cycles of bubbles past, true, but it is different in a lot of ways as well. Not only due to the excessive flow of cheap money and bad loans onto the market :), but in the availability of information and knowledge that was never there before. Every state or region has at least one blogger or Web site covering the real estate market in gory detail. Even the realtors themselves are getting in on the action, from the Real Estate Bloggers to NAR's own increased usage of Web sites

Of course, all of these people will have divergent viewpoints, and that's the beauty of it! You can sift through the blogs, read what's being said, and (to coin another phrase) "make up your own damn mind" in a way you never could in previous cycles. No matter where the bubble actually leads--boom, bust, froth, crash, or moderate landing--the end result is that (hopefully) buyers and sellers are smarter and better informed now at any time in the past. And that, as they say, is a good thing.

(No, this isn't a "sign off" post, and I'm not going away. :) I'm just in a markedly optimistic mood, which is rare, giving the amount of depressing info I read about housing on a daily basis. :))

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Thursday Housing News

It would seem that the legendary journey many D.C.-area homebuyers have been making to Baltimore in search of more affordable housing and investments is coming to an end. The market's sagging in Charm City just like everywhere else now:

"The housing boom is over," Chen said. "We're seeing the down side of the housing cycle. The housing market has been overheated, and price appreciation has been very, very strong -- stronger than can be supported by economic growth. Affordability is eroding really quickly, and exacerbating that is the fact that mortgage rates are rising. These forces are making it more difficult for households to get into a mortgage."

Let's hope their wishing for "anticipated job growth" bears some real fruit.

Speaking of green leafy things (Minds out of the gutter!), Housing Finance has a killer list of environmentally friendly items you can buy from your home, as well as where to get them. That's my consolation prize for not being able to find the "Wired" article on Green living I promised a while back. :)

And in terms of needing consolation, we head back to D.C. for this great story about what happens when overzealous developers meet angry NIMBY residents in one fell swoop. That's the whole issue with the housing market in a nutshell--develop, develop, develop, without a thought to the consequences. It's hardly like D.C. has tons of free green space to spare as it is, so why cheapen it further with McMansions appearing in your backyard overnight?

Then again, they're still doing better than the working poor in California, who are being ground up under the treads because the housing market is distorting how poverty costs are calculated. It gives the phrase "House-poor in California" a whole new meaning, doesn't it?

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Fed Watch: The Rising

For the 16th straight time, the Federal Reserve has raised the federal funds rate, this time to 5 percent. Most banks' prime lending rates will, in due course, go up to 8 percent....but that's the base rate. So if you've already got a maxed-out HELOC or credit cards, watch out now!

Tim Iacono has a great analysis of what a rate shift might mean, while Holden Lewis points out that we are in uncharted waters as far as economic forecasting goes. I especially like his takedown of the CPI:

The overall CPI was up 3.4 percent in the 12 months ending in March, and the core CPI -- all items except food and energy -- was up 2.1 percent. Over the same period, the chained personal consumptions expenditures went up 2.9 percent overall and up 2 percent excluding food and energy.

So if you don't eat, drive, or heat or cool your house, inflation isn't too bad -- around 2 percent. But if you do have an unfortunate fondness for gasoline, electricity and nutrition, your income might not be keeping up with inflation.

What? Didn't he know that the sophisticated mortgage holder makes their payment, even if they have to eat beans to do it? :)

Speaking of mortgage payments, not only will they continue to get more expensive, there are apparently fewer and fewer of them each quarter, according to Bloomberg:

May 10 (Bloomberg) -- Mortgage applications in the U.S. fell last week by the most since February as higher borrowing costs slowed purchases and pushed refinancing to its lowest level this year.

The Mortgage Bankers Association's index of applications to buy a home or refinance an existing loan declined 5.8 percent to 562.1 from 596.8. The group's refinancing index fell 8.8 percent last week to 1427.4, the lowest since the week ended Dec. 23, from 1565.6.

Is housing dead? Should we wait until the second half of the year, when the ARM resets hit? Or maybe Bernanke will get over his Bartiromo burn and give us some clearer guidance as to what we can expect?

It's a whole new world, folks. Better lock in those 30-year fixers while you can, save up, and consider diversifying.
Don't pull a Mike Brown and do a heckuva job of ignoring trouble until it's too late.

Posted at 04:59 PM | TrackBack

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Buying and Selling: "Brother, Can You Spare A Disconnect?"

By now the blogosphere and media are picking up on HUD Secretary Alphonse Jackson's, shall we say, selective decision-making in choosing contractor bids:

"He didn't get the contract," Jackson continued. "Why should I reward someone who doesn't like the president, so they can use funds to try to campaign against the president? Logic says they don't get the contract. That's the way I believe."

Here's an example of how HUD's funds are being better spent...or perhaps not:

Heckuva job there, Alphonse. Here's a hint: When everyone from Wonkette to Housing Finance is coming down on you, it might be time to do the trendy thing and consider spending more time with your family. ;)

Don't worry, though. If the remarks made by perennial lame duck John Snow to the NAHB are any indication, you'll have plenty of company:

At this stage of a strong economic recovery, it is natural and expected to see rising market interest rates at the long end of the curve. So there has been some concern expressed about mortgage resets, that is, the effect of higher rates on adjustable and non-traditional mortgages. It is first important to note that millions of Americans have been able to move into homeownership because of these products.

"I'm sorry, this administration has been disconnected. Please check your voting machine and try again in 2008. Thank you."

Posted at 05:20 PM | TrackBack

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Buying And Selling: What Does "Affordable" Mean?

This image from the Atlanta Metro Voices is an accurate assessment of what the future of the housing market looks like for anyone who isn't making the high six figures or above--the white picket fence looks more like prison bars. Check these statistics:

Affordable housing in metro Atlanta

The median sales price for a new home in Atlanta is $169,000 and the average monthly rent on new apartments is $900. The new housing is too expensive to afford for many police ($32,000/year), firefighters ($26,000/year) and schoolteachers ($34,000/year) on their starting salaries. (U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, retrieved 2/2003

One point well worth making is that it's absolutely criminal how little we pay our most dedicated public servants. Imagine if a starting schoolteacher's salary was $50k or better. It might still be a struggle, but it'd be a lot more feasible to make a living than with chicken feed pay like the above!

And this debate is happening all over the country, as is evidenced by this editorial from the New Jersey-based Journal:

Actually, leadership on the issue must come nationally. But Washington, in growing debt and misplaced mission, with a host of overwhelming worries, from terrorism to war to hurricanes to gasoline to balance of trade to immigration, seems immobile on any agenda.

ZOMG! Asking for national leadership in the "ownership society?" Don't they know that housing never goes down and the free market solves everything?

The unfortunately-named Mayor Rich Crotty is so concerned about lack of affordable housing in Orlando that he's formed a task force to look into the problem:

Words and images matter, the experts all agreed, which is one reason more of them are using the term "workforce housing" and shunning tainted phrases from the past such as low-income housing, subsidized housing and even affordable housing -- a term that means different things to different people.

Yeah, because having BROWN PEOPLE living next to you is so much of a bigger issue than your entire voting base having to use no-document ARMs just to get into a house.

If only more people would take the lovely June Fletcher's advice about affordability and reconsider how important it may be to live in the exurbs, eh?

Posted at 04:13 PM | TrackBack

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Buying And Selling: No Honor Among Thieves

If you want a perfect indictment about how dangerous and corrupt predatory lending is, you need look no further than Ameriquest falling to pieces after having to cough up $325 million in a settlement with lawsuits in 49 states.

49, people. The only reason why Alaska didn't sue is because no one lives there. ;) That means that law enforcement in virtually the entire country had reason to investigate these guys for being predatory sharks. And according to Reuters' Jonathan Stempel, the bloodletting isn't stopping there:

Seattle's Washington Mutual Inc. (WM.N: Quote, Profile, Research), the No. 3 lender, in February said it would lay off 2,500 mortgage employees. A year earlier, it wrapped up a downsizing that eliminated 8,600 mortgage jobs.

Olson said: "We're hearing that many of the medium-sized lenders are dropping out or are for sale, and most subprime lenders are struggling. If you can find buyers for these firms at all, the prices are not high."

How ironic. These companies made their bank by selling no-document, interest-only, negative-amortization crapola to people with bad or no credit, no savings, and no other hope of getting a home, and now their own businesses are on the discount rack.

I would be remiss if I didn't mention that Ameriquest's ambassador of doom knew his place in the greed line, kicking up his contributions to Big Daddy Bush while his employees apparently got rounded up at gunpoint. Apparently subprime lending has produced more than its share of prime profits for Arnall, courtesy of the Center for Responsive Politics.

On a related note--yikes! Check out this article from Fortune via CNN Money on the dead zone of the housing market. These guys are pulling no punches, and it's no wonder that Arnall decided now was the time to hit the netherworld Netherlands. I wouldn't want to be a major housing developer in this market either.

Oh, wait, it's their fault. Never mind. :)

Posted at 03:29 PM | TrackBack

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Fed Watch: For It Before He Was Against It

Apparently when the markets thought Helicopter Ben was done raising interest rates, they were somehow thinking he was not a disciple of Greenspan:

Stocks fell on Monday after CNBC's Maria Bartiromo revealed on air that Ben Bernanke felt his testimony last week had been "misunderstood." The anchor said Mr Bernanke had told her at the White House Correspondents' dinner in Washington on Saturday that he had not intended the markets to infer that the Fed was nearly done raising interest rates.

Awesome. First time out the gate and the pundits are already confuzzled by the Greenspeak. Of course, not all of us were so easily fooled. :) CNN Money has more.

Here's a great article from today's Post about the changing D.C. market. I'm happy to see buyers being rational and altering their expectations, but those prices are just insanely out of whack. At least the DiPietros are being smart and taking more off the top than their counterparts in Boston did.

Wow, this Hovnanian data is bad mojo, to say the least. Check it:

"While we have expected weaker trends in orders, we were surprised by the magnitude of the 20% decline in the quarter given the significant community growth," Oppenheim said in a research note.
Hovnanian, the eighth-largest U.S. home builder as measured by 2005 sales, has been active in making acquisitions the past year -- for example, purchasing First Home Builders of Florida and Oster Homes.
"The sharp decline in orders results from both lower gross orders and a significant uptick in cancellations -- likely in the Southeast, Southwest and West," said Oppenheim, who also lowered his price target on Hovnanian's shares to $40 from $50.

But...but...but...wasn't everyone fleeing the cities for quaint homes in the exurbs? Surely the media wouldn't--gasp--EXAGGERATE?!

Shocked, shocked, you know the rest.

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Housing Market: More Mixed Messages

" 'What? The market's great? I thought you said 'Housing was flat?' "

Okay, so, according to some media outlets, the economy is growing like a horny senior on prom night. Construction is up, development is up, and people--well, baby boomers, at least--are still buying luxury cars, even in the face of $3 dollars a gallon for gas.

And yet, others claim that confidence in the market is dropping, and overpriced, condo-glutted areas such as D.C. and Boston are turning into seriously slow markets where the buyers are gaining real advantage.

The key to this is knowing your individual market. Don't assume that if a bubble is bursting in City X, that it will also burst in City Y. Research the sales trends, property listings, and talk to your contacts and friends about what's going on. Each region of the country is having its own evolution in terms of the overall market, so what's "frothy" in one area could be "bubbilicious" in others. (I can't believe we can use those terms with straight faces these days. :) )

Someone at Ben Jones' Housing Bubble Blog made the same comment I was considering: If you're trying to sell your house for $399,000, and getting no takers, shaving a measly $5,000 off the price probably isn't going to cut it. You have to be realistic about what you can expect from any sale in even the best, most price-stable markets, and folks, this ain't it.

Speaking of mixed messages, the National Association of Realtors' site now has their own blog, and true to form, all the best housing bubble bloggers out there are kicking up dust. I might have to weigh in and start some ruckus myself. In the meanwhile, check out David Lereah Watch for stuff you may not be hearing from the REALTOR side of the fence.

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