CNBC just had on the HUD Secretary Alphonso Jackson. When asked about the housing boom by the CNBC anchor he said there might be pockets of weakness, but the boom will go on in "perpetuity".
Did anyone see that piece on CNBC last week or so on people buying real estate in Baltimore? When people are standing in line to buy crack houses (ok maybe just rundown) in places like that it makes me wonder if we must be near a top.
We might be near a top. The government's top housing official really did use the "P" word this morning when referring to the housing boom. Perpetuity means "continuing forever".
My brother in law just sold a house in baltimore, actually in Towson. Bought 2 years ago for $250 K, Just sold it last week for $412K. He put excatly zero dollars into improvments and updates. The hous3 is pretty dated. 1960's kitchen and baths, not excatly in good contidion, and certainly not very nice.
I think that comment is way off. I am frankly disgusted that a person in the position of HUD sec would say something like that. First off, the new trend for everyone seems to be these zero principal mortgages where everyone is just paying interest on the loans, and no principal. What happens here over time? People own nothing, they have 0 equity, and the bank owns everything. The slightest little change in purchasing habits of customers can disrupt an entire system, banks have way too many hard assets on hand and are forced to drop the price just to get them off of their hands. The american system of essentially paying "rent" on everything is only going to get worse and force banks into a hard spot when they are owning all the property. We will see but I am getting nice growth and dividends from some real estate stocks