Real Estate Investing

CNN.com has a live poll right now asking “What is the housing situation in your area?”  Readers can check:  1.) Lots of foreclosures, 2.) Fairly stable, or 3.) It’s booming.  A not-surprising low 5% answered “It’s booming.”  The big news is that most people acknowledge their own markets are fairly stable.

This finding may well clarify one of two things - or maybe both.

• Most homeowners are in denial that their homes are losing value.  MSNBC reports,

Despite dismal housing headlines and reports showing falling prices nationwide, owners in some once-hot areas still believe their home is gaining value or at least holding its own. And by hanging onto too-high expectations, sellers are unwittingly keeping the market from finding a bottom.

and

That puts real estate agents in a precarious position of pricing a house to sell, but not insulting the homeowner by recommending a lower asking price. To a homeowner, a low, but realistic, listing price is “like someone calling your kids ugly,” Ariely said with a laugh.

• Maybe every market isn’t bad because all real estate markets are local.  The community I live in has been hit hard by foreclosures because the city managers allowed investors to come in and develop en masse: cheaply built sardine housing with no green space, no sidewalks, and shady lenders.  The community next door is thriving.  Up the road in either direction we find strong sales and weak sales.  A lot also depends on the whether the homes are starter homes or luxury.  Sandy Nelson, an agent in Olympia, Washington, said,

Have you heard the saying “A man with three watches never knows what time it is”? This applies to gauging the real estate market. Consumers, adept at finding  property data on the Internet have experienced that data from Zillow.com is different from Trulia.com, and a home’s tax assessment is a whole other story. 

Turning to the news isn’t very helpful either, as you often hear conflicting reports depending on the media spin.  Real estate is extremely local and detailed. For example, “Home sales in Thurston county are down” is not the same as “Home values in Thurston county are down”. This isn’t just a nuance; these are differences that completely change the picture. It’s like taking your temperature with a tire pressure gauge rather than a thermometer.

Before you jump off a bridge over the value of your home, talk to a professional in real estate to see if what you read is true.  You might want to just stay put until things settle down.  While not every person can wait and see because time IS of the essence, sometimes it is better to wait and see.  If tomorrow doesn’t bring the solution you seek, then next week, next month, or next year might.  Meanwhile focus on things you can change.  Do like Real Simple writer Steve Almond did and try to live a week without spending money.  

On the way home, we stop to pick up buns from Erin’s favorite Portuguese bakery. I could argue that I’m not buying the buns for myself, but rules are rules, so I beg Zach to pay for them.

“Come on,” I say. “I’ll pay you back next week.”

“Isn’t that just a deferred purchase?” Zach asks.

I ponder this question, weighing its logic against the prospect of returning home to my wife bunless.

“Listen,” I say. “The lettuce in our garden is going crazy. Buy me these buns and I’ll give you a bushel of romaine. Dude, that’s a straight-up barter.”

The commentary is witty, but it’s sobering to think how hard it would be to really stop spending and the reason our economy will recover. We will continue spending money because bartering won’t sustain our lifestyles.

Photo by clearlyambiguous via Flickr Creative Commons.