ECON Latest Case-Shiller housing index...

Here's the latest Case-Shiller housing index...read and weep if you need to sell a house. This is a pdf.

Click on the link below...chose open. You need Abobe Reader to open it. (It's a freeware download.)

It looks like housing will not reach pre-bubble levels (for most markets) until the first quarter of 2009. However, if the web bots are right, by then housing prices are going to be the least of our worries.

BTW, "100" means the price (inflation) adjusted level BEFORE the bubble started. Some markets, like Detroit, are already at pre-bubble levels.

Flavius Aetius

http://www.timebomb2000.com/vb/showthread.php?t=305159
Why Housing Is Far from Bottoming

That thread explains exactly why, with multiple substantive reasons, housing has a LONG way to tank for a LONG time before it ever hits what will be an astounding bottom.

Sorry

Flavius,

but I think the bubble started over 15 years ago. Houses are most certainly not going to reach 'pre-bubble' levels for many years baring a catastrophic melt down (as per the bots) in a year or two.


a $15,000 house in San Jose, Ca. will once again reach that level or lower, instead of the 167,000$ that it was selling for three years ago.


while there is still the slightest 'ray of sunshine' in articles or local talk and gossip, we won't have reached the absolute bottom.

dragonslayer2001 said:

Flavius,

but I think the bubble started over 15 years ago. Houses are most certainly not going to reach 'pre-bubble' levels for many years baring a catastrophic melt down (as per the bots) in a year or two.


a $15,000 house in San Jose, Ca. will once again reach that level or lower, instead of the 167,000$ that it was selling for three years ago.


while there is still the slightest 'ray of sunshine' in articles or local talk and gossip, we won't have reached the absolute bottom.

Click to expand...

dragonslayer:

The current bubble definitely started after the post-Y2K year of 2000....the previous years were slightly below the 100 level.

The Case-Shiller index confuses people in that it was designed to be NET of monetary changes....inflation or deflation effects were removed/filtered out. The idea was to indicate what the REAL cost was, as opposed to the nominal dollar amount.

A house costing $15,000 in 1965 might be the same as a house costing $195,000 in 2005 IF YOU CANCEL OUT the change in value of the dollar.
What you are actually measuring is changes in prices based on a constant purchasing power basis. Which most sheeple can't understand.

What the authors found out from creating this series is that, with few exceptions, in terms of constant purchasing power, house prices tended
to be very constant (that's the "100" level). Only in the 1930's and a couple of times in the 1970's did house prices change beyond monetary moves.

Until we come to 2000...then prices actually started to climb big time, reaching absurd levels. Prices are crashing right now...and will again reach the 100 level (for most markets) by the first quarter 2009.

If the web bots are correct, I expect that prices will continue to crash right through the 100 level. Cliff talked about people squatting in houses...

Flavius Aetius