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US housing market hit a ‘significant slowdown’ in recent weeks, Redfin CEO says

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Re: US housing market hit a ‘significant slowdown’ in recent weeks, Redfin CEO says

#31

Post by paulie_a »

tompetry wrote: post #26
paulie_a wrote: post #17

Redfin didn't exactly do anything interesting or unique. It was literally yet another real estate app/website. It's not surprising.

To be fair, Redfin is a technology focused MLS member and agency, not just a listings aggregation app. You're entitled to your opinion if you don't think that is interesting or unique, but their offering is far more than just a website and app. Interesting data on their agent stats and comp here: https://www.redfin.com/blog/2018/01/how-much-do-redfin-agent...

I worked in that industry. It really is a pretty "meh" company.

Also there is no MLS, there are a lot of them.

Re: US housing market hit a ‘significant slowdown’ in recent weeks, Redfin CEO says

#32

Post by debacle »

mortenjorck wrote: post #15

The Case-Shiller Index currently has home prices rising at 2-3x inflation: https://www.housingwire.com/articles/46307-case-shiller-home... That would certainly seem to be unsustainable.

We're still post-crash, and China is putting a lot of money into American real estate.

Re: US housing market hit a ‘significant slowdown’ in recent weeks, Redfin CEO says

#33

Post by jeffbax »

ProfessorLayton wrote: post #20

The upcoming changes in the tax code certainly did not help the housing market: - The new SALT cap is extremely low, particularly if you own a home in the Bay Area. 10K! Mitigative solution: Stay put and keep current tax base, hampering both supply and demand (for a nicer home) - The doubled standard deduction made owning with a mortgage less attractive (But a win overall once your loan is paid off enough). - Mortgag…

This is all true, but the mortgage interest deduction should be $0, particularly in the rich cities that refuse to let enough homes get built and fix things like zoning. It's an awful distortion that's a handout to the wealthy to the penalty of renters (generally less well off)

Re: US housing market hit a ‘significant slowdown’ in recent weeks, Redfin CEO says

#34

Post by dragonwriter »

akira2501 wrote: post #18
danjoc wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not really what happened in the last crash though. The people who bought, held. The only people who got hurt were home owners who go underwater and then lose a job. They can't afford to wait it out, they can't afford to make the payment, so they end up in foreclosure. Then the bank holds and it ends up as a zombie home.[1] The zombie falls to pieces, so the bank gets a bail out, the home is written off, and th…

> The only people who got hurt were home owners who go underwater and then lose a job. Or those with Adjustable Rate Mortgages that popped and then got priced out of their homes.

> Or those with Adjustable Rate Mortgages that popped and then got priced out of their homes.

Or those with interest-only periods, same effect.

Re: US housing market hit a ‘significant slowdown’ in recent weeks, Redfin CEO says

#35

Post by ntkachov »

I can put some perspective on this. We got priced out of the market in Feb. According to the bank, we can't get a mortgage where the overall cost of the payments on all our debt can't exceed 41% of our pre-tax income. Given that our student loans eat about 20% of our pre-tax income, that means we only have 20% of our income left for housing. Rising interest rates means that more of our house payment goes to interest which means less of it is left for principal, so we cannot afford the same home we could last Oct. The tax incentives used to mean that we could deduct a good chunk of our housing costs from our taxes and use some of that money to live, bringing it inline with what we would pay for rent. However, that changed and made renting easier on us financially.

High student loan payments and high mortgage rates means that the only thing left to give is the price of the home. Or the bank can be cool with us leveraging ourselves to 50+% income.

Re: US housing market hit a ‘significant slowdown’ in recent weeks, Redfin CEO says

#38

Post by mjevans »

Housing is only an 'investment' because of how expensive it inherently is.

However, my opinion has been that housing /has been/ in a bubble since at least the mid 2000s (pre recession); and it didn't actually deflate (at least in the area I live in) /during/ that recession.

It would really be nice if some way of fixing this bubble chasing nonsense happened. Maybe if healthcare and retirement were fully socialized this would be less of an issue.

Re: US housing market hit a ‘significant slowdown’ in recent weeks, Redfin CEO says

#39

Post by aceon48 »

jeffbax wrote: post #33
ProfessorLayton wrote: post #20

The upcoming changes in the tax code certainly did not help the housing market: - The new SALT cap is extremely low, particularly if you own a home in the Bay Area. 10K! Mitigative solution: Stay put and keep current tax base, hampering both supply and demand (for a nicer home) - The doubled standard deduction made owning with a mortgage less attractive (But a win overall once your loan is paid off enough). - Mortgag…

This is all true, but the mortgage interest deduction should be $0, particularly in the rich cities that refuse to let enough homes get built and fix things like zoning. It's an awful distortion that's a handout to the wealthy to the penalty of renters (generally less well off)

It also encourages debt and is effectively a subsidy to banks

Re: US housing market hit a ‘significant slowdown’ in recent weeks, Redfin CEO says

#40

Post by benatkin »

If they were assuming that because I turned 30 this decade I'd suddenly become interested in owning a home, they were wrong! If the financial pundits believed all the articles the culture pundits were writing about millennials they could have known.
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