All Forum Posts by: James Hamling

In this MSA we have rings of markets. We have Down-town city center, the "inner suburbs" which is the area inside a major highway ring we have, and the "outer suburbs", and than extended Twin Cities area, and lastly rural.

The down-town centers are all but decimated. These are factors specific to city of Minneapolis and city of St. paul, and the assorted epic stupidity in uber activist leadership of those cities. And the only thing holding them together in any way shape or form is the "hold-out" areas because despite the league of morons running things there is some pockets of great communities, keeping there specific micro area great.

The inner ring suburbs have taken a hell of a beating as fall-out from all this being so close to it all, are aged a bit more, and those cities in general are solidly in decline. Again, with pockets of divergence which is due solely to the specific community actions of those specific areas.

Now, the outer suburbs, good luck getting a "good buy" there. This is where everyone is going and I do mean EVERYONE. It's on level with the suburb rush post WWII, I kid you not that is the only thing we have to compare it against that even compares because it's on that scale.

Those of financial capacity have been in a mass migration from inner too outer urban/suburban areas. Leaving those of limited capacity/options.

So you have an area in the MSA that is pacing 1 month supply of inventory, sales prices over asking, moving in on average 10-20 days DAYS listing.

And you have areas in MSA that prices keep dropping, inventory sits, sits, sits, and things move slowly.

So if you just take the entire area as a whole, you won't get any form of an accurate picture of things at all.

Again, keep in mind the Twin Cities metro area and expanded area is dang near as big as some states! It ain't small. It's the 16th biggest in the nation, 15 counties......

I have to wonder how many other MSA's in this have similarly cooked data.

So if you were looking to buy specifically in the Socialist capitol of the city of Minneapolis, because you want to be a Landlord the single hardest way possible, yeah you could get some crappy places in crappy areas and have the leverage.

But if you want to go where Landlords are appreciated, supported, empowered, and it's a decent market and all that, no, it's far from a buyers market.

This is similar to what I am seeing, anecdotally, in Rochester, NY.

This is similar to what I am seeing, anecdotally, in Rochester, NY.

What is? What the Redfin piece says or what I shared?
Everyone should probably read the source article in it's full as the interesting gymnastics of data selection and meaning inference is much clearer to notice.
https://www.redfin.com/news/record-dollar-value-home-listing...

I see a trend in Rochester, NY similar to what you are seeing in Minneapolis. People want to move out of the city and there aren't anywhere close to enough homes in the nice suburbs. So, the city has maybe 3 months of inventory and nicer suburbs have maybe a month. Friends of mine took 6 months of making offers above listing price to get a home.

Yeah, and people wonder why we don't trust the media anymore.

Because it's blatantly BS a ridiculous amount of the time now.

"Oh it's a buyers market" really..... Tell that to the persons on offer 7, 10, 14 feeling like they won't be able to buy a home. Not because they don't have the $ credit or financing but because they keep getting beat out over n over again.

And when they go to a new-con development it isn't any better.

That's the reality on the ground here.

#1 reason people are not selling there homes now to make the move to a different one isn't interest rate anymore, it's the fear of being able to find and secure that next home.

Interest rate is #2 and getting weaker every week/month because people are accepting this just is the new norm. And fact of how big there equity is, rolling into next buy, diminishes the sting from rate because the amount financed is mitigated down.

I have no doubt there is micro markets of struggle out there, heck I detailed some. But to infer the whole is like those pieces is BS distortion, yet again.

Hell, meteorologists seem to be right today more often then big media......

I can understand why you think that, but I think what you are missing is that this is a very big country and Minneapolis, for all it's greatness, is a teeny, tiny part of things. The article is about the country. Can anyone spot Minneapolis ?
The solution is for people to move away from the cities and that isn't going to happen in large numbers.

Ken, seriously, what's your deal man?

If you actually read what I wrote you'd see how your making absolutely 0 sense.

Your arguing to something i didn't state, nor inferred. I never spoke about 1 city vs the country, I have no idea where you invented that from.

I gave examples using Detroit: Michigan.....

You just ignore everything I say, make up random nonsense in response to say..... I don't even know what the hell your trying to say anymore....

Are you butt hurt that were not all freaking out offering to dump portfolios because Redfin released some propaganda piece?

Ken, maybe remember that my discipline in prior life was as an Engineer.... Were kinda known for our expert mastery and obsession with data. I know data, and all the confirmation fallacy's and bias that can be concocted and "cooked" with data.

Just on it's face stating a singular state of real estate at national level is BS. There is no such thing as a singular direction of real estate across the nation.

Even in 2008/2009 there was micro markets all but completely unphased from the GFC. And the degree to which it impacted varied across this giant nation.

I have 0 doubt there is specific micro markets that are right now going through significant decline. Others, especially those in TX, going through consolidation. FL has some interesting things going on in some micro-markets that is completely non existent in many other FL markets.

Engineering school goes into great detail teaching on the dangers of false outputs from data set inputs.

The article states a very big assumption using total dollar amount of listed properties to infer several other assumptions. Well guess what, say you have 50% inflation the total aggregate $ amount will go way up and it does not mean volume went up, nor anything else other than the inflation is showing.

Assumptions based upon assumptions of assumptions. Yeah, that does not lend for accuracy buddy.

Do you know how they came up with these numbers and assumptions? I do...... They invented the # for buyers..... yes it's NOT an actual #, they just made one up based on there assumptions of assumptions of assumptions........

So if Redfin was being HONEST they'd say they GUESS there is more sellers than buyers because there GUESSING that ______.

Methodology

The number of sellers in the market is simply active listings, or the total number of homes actively for sale at any point during a given month. Active listings data come from the MLS.

Because there is not a similar metric measuring how many buyers are actively in the market, we developed one. We took active listings and pending sales from the MLS to estimate what fraction of homes on the market will sell within a given month. Analogously, we estimated what fraction of buyers on the market will find a home within a given month using Redfin data on the typical time from first tour to purchase. The ratio of these two data points approximates the ratio of buyers to sellers in the market. We then multiplied that ratio by the number of active listings to get the estimated total number of buyers in the market. Note that our estimate of buyers is not based on Redfin traffic or customer acquisition data, and the purpose of this analysis is to measure the number of buyers and sellers in the housing market as a whole. All metrics that go into our calculation of the number of buyers and sellers in the market are seasonally adjusted.

Your comment "I have no doubt there is micro markets of struggle out there, heck I detailed some. But to infer the whole is like those pieces is BS distortion, yet again."
(The struggle is countrywide, man - wake up and smell the coffee)

You have proven you are a logger who can't see the forest for the trees.

Engineers are detail oriented, thankfully. I want bridges and cars and computers to be built by engineers. But engineers rarely make good forecasters.

No offense meant. Just answering your wandering, lack of focus post. That's all.

You know why an engineer makes the BEST forecaster.....

Because we don't give a flock about all the noise, we simply follow the data and facts no matter where it takes us especially when it goes opposite of our original thesis.

We are the closest thing to real life Vulcans as it get's. (for those Treki's out there)

When you want to know how something really is, ask an engineer, we'll give it to you straight.

Engineers believe what has been will always be and fail to see changes.
Advances in engineering are only made after many failures.
That isn't a problem, it's to be expected, but when a national study is reduced to
a tiny sample (single city) it's outside of the study and can't logically be treated as
part of the study.

If you are one degree off in plotting your walk to the park down the street, that is hardly a problem. If you are one degree off sailing from Rotterdam to Charleston SC that is a much bigger problem. You can't use a small study to disprove a much larger one. It's false metrics.

I'm not sure what to say here Ken because this reads to me as a random rambling of feelings and assumptions by a biased person striving to argue themselves right vs actually being accurate or right.

Engineers literally create and advent the future, I have no idea how one can say engineers fail to see the future because the first step in innovation is vision.

Space-X, who do you think designed and created all of that, it wasn't janitors. Engineers.

Chat GPT, again it was engineers.

Engineers see the unseen and than bring it into existence.

The process, like with Space-X, yes it is a chain of many many failures. It's called failing FORWARD. You theorize, test, create, test, learn, re-theorize, test, create again, test, over and over. Fail often and fail productively. That's progress.

Now back to all this and data.

As I have explained several times now Ken, when looking at a large thing such as real estate on a national level, it's very VERY easy to get false output's. Because the degree of variation in the inputs will skew the data.

That's the example of a collapsing Detroit mixed in with other not collapsing MI markets, making the final output incorrectly look as if all MI markets are in trouble, which they were not.

So in that sense, the individual market data going into the whole broad based blanket sentiment IS very important. If there is any 1 data input of significant deviation it means you will not have accuracy in the broad based output.

For every data input of deviation, the % of deviation compounds with the others. So you get to the end with a broad based generalization that then is within ___ range of accuracy.

Redfin conveniently left out the range of variance. Know why, because it's MASSIVE. The article would loose all it's "sizzle" if they honestly stated there # for buyers:sellers is give or take a 370% variance.

Yeah, so it could also be there is more buyers than sellers by the same number or even more.

You keep conveniently passing over these things like the methodology of how they came up with the so called info, that they literally invented the # for buyers based on there assumption of an assumption making there final assumption.

0 Votes

Quote from @Henry Clark:

Quote from @Jay Hinrichs:

Quote from @Henry Clark:

OP. What is a nice 3/2 going for in that area? We don’t do housing investments. But if it gets down to $250 to $350k range we will buy.

Please give some price points year to year comparisons. Thanks.

that price point is inner city Hood..

Yep. My point is certain markets like DC, Fort Lauderdale, Miami, LA, San Diego will always have a market no matter what the stress level is. If OP thinks DC is dropping significantly then I’ll buy. And we don’t do housing.

Yup Henry, I'd jump in too.

For me, snagging a Georgetown brownstone would be like a 69 GT 500.... You get a chance to get one at big discount you don't think you just buy and figure the rest out later.

1 Vote

Quote from @Henry Clark:

OP. What is a nice 3/2 going for in that area? We don’t do housing investments. But if it gets down to $250 to $350k range we will buy.

Please give some price points year to year comparisons. Thanks.

Lol, $350k.

I just looked around Georgetown and cheapest thing I could find was over $4million.