All Forum Posts by: Tracy Harmon

I'm pretty sure that home values in Long Beach have gone down a LOT more than 18%.

Exactly so, Shari. As a country, we've borrowed our way into a pretty big hole, and now the government proposes borrowing our way out of it. Since we have no manufacturing base to speak of, we have no real way of creating wealth to get us out of this hole.

It's very clear that most people will keep voting for the dorks that helped create this mess, and the dorks will evidently hire the guys that made the problem to help "fix" it.

I'd suggest an economic revolution. Given the communication tech nowdays, why can't we create local co-ops to fund small manufacturing businesses to start creating real wealth. I don't see how it's really cheaper to ship our raw materials to China and let them make things and then ship them back here than it would be to make things locally and save mass quantities of oil in shipping costs.

We've let the "experts" tell us we don't need to manufacture the things we use, and now we're paying the price.

Time to do things differently.

Mike, you are so right. Given the fact that we have chased away our manufacturing base, I fail to see how we're going to borrow our way out of the large hole we've borrowed our way into.

Creating wealth can only happen when you create something that other people want to buy. We've let the college boys in charge of our educational system, financial system and government tell us that we should let those silly foreigners make everything we need. Whoops, now we have no means to dig ourselves out of this hole.

I'd suggest the best place to put money these days would be to create local co-ops to lend money to start small manufacturing businesses and for local mortgages. We have the communication tech to cut out the middlemen and start a new economic revolution in this country. We don't need $1mil a month accountants running MEGACORP to make things happen.

No amount of bailing will keep the housing boat afloat at it's current level. Median home prices still need to fall at least 35% to bring them into line with median income, assuming income doesn't fall, given the fact that the lending institutions have been forced by reality to return to sane lending practices.

We're back to a substantial down payment, and realistic appraisals. Those of you who learned real estate in the last 10-15 years are out of your element, and should probably go get jobs.

WaMu has been overextended for a long time. We recently had some buyer's official checks from WaMu that they elected to hold for 5 days, seems sorta desperate to me.

I just did some research on median income vs median home prices. From 1968 til 1995, the median home price was about 2.7 times median income. In 2005, the median home price was 4.85 times median income. Using the historic data which are based on sound lending practices, the median home price right now should be about $135k. The actual median price right now is $206k. Given the fact that lenders have gotten back most of their sanity, prices will be falling for quite some time now. Thinking that "we've hit bottom" based on intuition, or ouija boards or what your Aunt Martha's cousin's realtor said is probably not a great idea.

The end isn't even close, see my post "analysis of income vs home prices". Life will be hard for quite a while kids. Please keep your arms and legs inside the car at all times.

If you have qualified buyers, why would you go to a mortagage broker?
The only use for a mortgage broker used to be to qualify people who had no business buying a home.........hence the current meltdown, duh.

Well, that's what people get for listening to mortgage brokers and realtors. Please see my post regarding income vs home prices. Numbers don't lie.

Wow, 20% down, maybe the old timers in the lending industry remember when hardly anybody defaulted on their mortgage.