Housing Market Collapse 2.0 Accelerates Rapidly!

[Account Closed]

These are current headlines. Although I don't think a collapse is imminent, I'm buying properties "off market" that have equity just to safe. I've seen several ups & downs of the housing market over the years and I don't subscribe to the notion that prices Only Go UP, or It's Different THIS Time, or I Can Outsmart the Market. I just plan my purchases to win if the market is going up and to win if the market is going down.

The Seattle slump

Let’s start with Bloomberg’s article that came out two days ago since Bloomberg also now sees Seattle as being an omen for what is developing nationally:

"The housing market ramped up right after that season of storms for about three months and then began to decline again"

"With incomes certain to remain flat (as they did) and mortgage rates certain to rise due to the Federal Reserve’s quantitative tightening (as they did), predicting a housing-market collapse for this summer seemed as easy as it was in 2007"

This could be the very beginning of a turning point,” said Robert Shiller, a Nobel Prize-winning economist who is famed for warning of the dot-com and housing bubbles…. A slew of figures released this week gives ample evidence of at least a cooling. Existing-home sales dropped in June for a third straight month. Purchases of new homes are at their slowest pace in eight months. Inventory, which plunged for years, has begun to grow again as buyers move to the sidelines, sapping the fuel for surging home values. Prices for existing homes climbed 6.4 percent in May, the smallest year-over-year gain since early 2017, and have gained the least over three months since 2012….

Seattle is not the only bellwether now in play. California is another one of the nation’s strongest real-estate markets:

The decline really is all across the nation at this point:

“Weak Housing Market Could Trigger Retail-Spending Pullback” If there is any sector that is susceptible to getting hurt by the actions of the Fed and the rise in materials costs it is the housing market. We saw that it in the sales data quite clearly this week. Previously, it was reported that existing home demand eased in June and today the data showed that new home sales also tanked during the month…"