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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

#131
post #41
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)

I'm a homeowner and I think it's an absolute crime my mortgage interest is tax deductible yet rent isn't. If we believe, at a philosophical level, that interest payments should be tax deductible, ok, then make ALL interest paid tax deductible - credit cards, personal loans, auto loans, payday loans, etc. It's shameful. That being said, with the new tax bill, 90+% of both owners and renters will be taking the standard…

I remember when credit card interest was federally deductible.

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

#132
post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My house in Seattle has been appreciating by about $100k/year over the past five years. In other words, I'm making $100k/year on a $50k investment. You wont find returns like that in a 401k. And my interest payments are less than rent would be. Last but not least, home appreciation is TAX FREE up to half a million bucks. By all means, max out the $20k or so you are allowed to put into a 401k, but don't fool yourself…

You're talking about unrealised profits. In order for the profits to be realised you need to sell the house. So what happens then? Either you keep the profits and are left without a house, or you buy another house and are left without a profit. Because, you see, it's not only your particular house that has appreciated, all houses have.

Yep. I own where I live in Seattle and some of my younger-than-me friends and colleagues are routinely "you're so lucky, you're sitting on a gold mine!"

Maybe so, but the sizzling hot housing market means I can't ever move to another place I own because, like you said, I'd have to take all of that appreciation and plow it right back into another property. Never mind that anything north of the ship canal is still completely unaffordable by my standards (that is, $450k or less, which is still a staggering sum of money in my world).

I'd much rather do like the grandparent and have those gains as actual money in a 401k, not theoretical money in a house that I'd have to practically leave the time zone to realize.

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

#133

I wonder if the trade hostilities are affecting foreign (particularly Chinese) real estate purchases in the US. I suspect this is the case, but it's probably not enough to significantly contribute to the slowdown (at least not more so than rising mortgage rates and overheated prices)

IMO, I think the foreign buyers will be a bigger factor than many think primarily because it was an external force not directly reliant on local wages to buy. In essence, the foreign buyers were able to prop up or increase prices much higher than the market equilibrium. If you take away those buyers then the whole thing quickly loses its foundation and falls in on itself. I think this will be the case. People think t…

There are lots of factors at play, some are more significant that others in one area of a country than another. Take Brexit, 5th largest economy, if you look at UK car stats (SMMT website) businesses are in recession as far as car manufacturers are concerned. Another factor, the GBP has dropped, this makes investing in London attractive for overseas buyers who may have invested in the US market. Plus as London house prices have dropped this also becomes attractive to overseas buyers. In turn as London property is very expensive, this drags the average's up for the price of property in the rest of the country. These factors will be repeated in many countries around the world, but one thing the US has lots of which counts against the US housing market, is land. The UK is highly populated, England is densely populated, the demand for land in the UK is at a much higher premium than in other parts of the world like Europe or the US. In turn, the UK landowners benefit from this global demand ie stability to park money in UK assets due to the reputation of the UK on the global stage, ie no major revolutions in recent history, one of the oldest legal & financial systems in the world. All this stability to park money in the UK pumps up property prices, so with Trump getting into office, is he lowering your property prices considering his flip flopping around with what he says? I see Trumps election as a desperate attempt to consolidate the US position on the global stage as the rest of the world wants detach itself from the petrodollar. As the dollar declines much of your money has to now be spent on things to help you live instead of just going into property. Be prepared for inflation and hedge accordingly, property prices falling is good for the wider US economy, as high property prices where a great % of income is going on servicing the property is bad for the wider economy. Besides there are more Basel requirements coming in next year and many banks have not got themselves ready for that either.

One other thing, Brexit, 5th largest economy, if the EU doesnt allow the UK to stay in the single market, what sort of effect on the global economy will the UK market crashing out of the EU single market and going into major recession have on the global economy. Brexit in a way has the global economy by the balls and the EU led by Germany will be seen as the bad guys for not budging on their philosophy.

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

#134
post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cars are a depreciating asset because you can always manufacture more of them Housing appreciates because land supply is limited in big cities. You can't manufacture more land

How simplistic. America has enough land . Vast swaths of it are empty. What we don't have enough of is density in the places where people actually want to be, and that's not a natural limit. You could make more density, if it weren't illegal in all of these desirable places. And I just mentioned Tokyo, which actually does have serious land constraints but does zoning and transit well. (And where they are making more…

It's not as simple as merely lifting regulations to support high density housing. The underlying infrastructure has to be able to support that density as well.

Most cities would fail to function if they all had the same density as New York or Tokyo

To solve the infrastructure problem, you have to, again, invest billions.

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

#135

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…

if youre paying 20% of your income to student loans, buying a house isnt exactly the best play. Student loan interest is a scam. Dig deep and pay that jam off as quickly as a you can.

Best advice in this thread, IMO.

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

#136
post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You absolutely cannot consider it as a single entity. It is not distributed, it is fractured. There is zero consistency. I got out of that industry a while back and I still have the local MLS phone number memorized. It's a complete shit show as of 2013. Basically anything that is on any MLS I've seen is probably incorrect.

Yeah it was pretty bad 5-10 years ago, but working with it as recently as Tuesday, I can say that the major benefit of sites like Zillow and Redfin is that MLS companies have had to adapt fast to stay competitive. The realtor I'm working with has changed MLS platforms three times in the last year alone.

When I was selling my condo last year I asked for it to be kept off of Zillow. That site is incredibly innacurate for integrating data. Their cute name for pricing is always way off in my experience.

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

#137
post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It depends why you were buying it. Were you buying to flip it as a short term investment, or a place to live in for the next 5-10-20+ years? the market price only matters if you're forced to sell or forced to buy. if you dont need to sell or dont need to buy, you can ignore it

I bought my last place in 2006, intending to live there at least 5-10 years. I ended up living there for 11 years, with the majority of the time being there with it some $120k underwater. It was terrible and I wished I had waited a year or two - not only did I pay more to service a more expensive mortgage, I walked away with considerably less equity than I would have if I just waited. I don't know how anyone could po…

> I don't know how anyone could possibly be thinking about purchasing a place right now.

Well people need a roof over their heads. In a lot of areas (more rural for example) rental properties aren’t very common and they’re often smaller places so if you have a family and want somewhere to sleep at night you’ll need to buy.

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

#138
post #7
post #5

There are all sorts of reasons that house sales slow down, not the least of which are reduced tax benefits, higher interest rates, and a general market forces. The interesting thing to watch for is the flipper sales. Which is to say if a significant chunk of the market in your area is actually being held by people who bought the house just to flip it, then when you get two or three months of flat to downward pressure…

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…

It’s depressing to see no one talk about mortgage backed securities. The Great Recession happened after large swaths of wealth were held in MBSes backed by ARM mortgages. As the ARMs came due people could no longer afford their homes. Normally the underwriting bank would default the loan and resell the property. But the initiating bank sold the mortgage off soon after minting the deal. The values of the MBSes and related goods and services were priced using a Gaussian copala (sp) function fitted to ever increasing property values from the 80s S&L boom. Ie their model had no conception of normal, average price growth. Society had calculated something like 72$ trillion in MBS capitalization and “realized” a much smaller fraction of that wealth.

Article: https://www.wired.com/2009/02/wp-quant/

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

#139
post #87
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It gets worse than that, https://www.lendingtree.com/home/mortgage/interest-only-mort...

Is this the first you’re hearing of an interest only mortgage? They have been very popular in Southern California for a couple of decades. The theory is that it allows the speculator / owner to get a much more expensive home and just pay the interest for 3 to 10 years. Then sell and reap the massive appreciation. Except of course when the market goes the other way and you’re underwater and then whoops! the payment fl…

There are also perfectly valid use cases for interest only mortgages. The classic case is for people with highly variable incomes, for instance people working on commission or people working in bonus driven industries. In lean years you pay just then interest and in healthy years you pay down some principle.

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

#140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I bought my last place in 2006, intending to live there at least 5-10 years. I ended up living there for 11 years, with the majority of the time being there with it some $120k underwater. It was terrible and I wished I had waited a year or two - not only did I pay more to service a more expensive mortgage, I walked away with considerably less equity than I would have if I just waited. I don't know how anyone could po…

> I don't know how anyone could possibly be thinking about purchasing a place right now. Well people need a roof over their heads. In a lot of areas (more rural for example) rental properties aren’t very common and they’re often smaller places so if you have a family and want somewhere to sleep at night you’ll need to buy.

Right, but those aren’t the places we’re talking about that have huge swings due to the national boom/bust cycle... ie. cities and suburbs of those cities.

Basic rule of thumb - if you can rent a like property for less than you can purchase, you should rent, esp. when things are toward the top of the market. The irrational fear that one will be priced out of a market leads to bad decisions. The idea that renting is throwing money away/giving it to a landlord leads to bad decisions.

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