Final approach for real estate

WOW...i gotta thank asb for turning me down for a refi last year and forcing me to sell my condo early last year...if not id be stuck in this soft market rutt..i guess timing is everything in this market...if you held out and was greedy you will be suffering right now if you had to sell your place....

So when will be the best tme to buy??

buy now...since banks are tight now for qualifying for a loan...get less competition..if u got lots of cash or equity...u can pretty much get at least $20k-$50k off the listing price...maybe more...if the owner is stuck with the property and cant sell it...if u are a foreigner and ure money is better than the us$ then u can make out...lucky the guy who bought my place was doing an exchange sell....so he had the cash to buy my place...i gave it to him below the asking price...but hey...$370k for less than 800 square feet of living space was a good deal anyways....i was kinda greedy asking for $385k...

Soft landing? Fuel prices through the roof, tourism going down the drain, a iffy economy and BK's at a new high. Even with a Mortgage Bailout, paid for by taxpayers that Pay their Mortgage and by renter's, I think the landing may be a very rough one. I will buy my next Hawaii home soon and by offering at least 20% below todays so called, market. The unemployed or under employed or over extended do not have much leverage in negotiations.

We will remind you of this article, when your predicted 'soft crash' will occur.
Of course not many will take this piece seriously, the implosion will be unprecedented.

Brace yourself.

A sloppy, soft, frenetic, but somewhat bumpy landing
to the bottom.

Good news.

More than half of single-family homebuyers paid more than $625,000.00 for a house in June, an 8.8 percent decline from the year-prior $685,000.00

Wonderful ! I'll take two at those prices.

Look at who the "expert" is: a real estate agent!

Reporters call on so-called experts who have vested self interests in the outcome to comment on the current state of affairs and get a nice look in the rear view mirror and a very biased view og the road ahead. Are real estate people economists. Sure, and specialists in individual transactions being asked a big-picture question.

They clearly haven't yet factored in the impact of the combined effects of oil prices on travel, tourism, and food, among other things.

It's going to be ugly. When it is, they'll look up and say. "It was worse than we thought, but it's about to turn around any day now."

Following bad information leads to bad outcomes..

good luck..

The realtors are always trying to put a good spin on negative news. The fact is that the way the market is now was projected awhile back but the board as always, kept putting a good spin on things. This is July, take a survey of all your active real estate agents with the two largest franchise outfits and tell me what percentage of agents are not going to take home a paycheck this month. The new data out yesterday also shows that besides rising oil prices, food, durable goods and transportation, the newest item affecting many consumers are the delinquency in their utility bills. It is projected that if stability can come to the market place, the housing situation should bottom out in 9 months. But I don't look for that as more financial institutions will be announcing their problems shortly. IndyMac is one of those that looks to be in trouble with their sub prime lending and another is GMAC. We have only heard of the sub prime turmoil with the bigger financial institutions, now is the beginning that you will hear of the mid size lenders and their sub prime mess. In Orange County in Southern California - a pretty much upscale area, as of today - 40% of the homes on the market is either a foreclosure or a short sale!!! Bottom line, for now - it is just not looking that rosy and you will see a lot of real estate agents with less than 5 years experience submitting their resumes if they haven't already. I personally know of quite a few experienced agents in Hawaii who already has left the real estate market to go back to their previous profession in the banking or other industry - and by experience, we are talking about people who had over a decade or so in the real estate market. In order for the franchise outfits in Hawaii to survive, they need to start by reducing their agent headcount by at least 50% immediately. This will save them cost and they also need to reduce their office space to save on lease and rent factor. But they are the real estate "experts" so they should already know this - right? I have seen many real estate franchises up in CA that has already downsize their operation and this was done over 6 months or more ago. It will be tough but hang in there everyone - good days will return eventually. Just need to make good financial decisions for now and tough it out as best as possible.

IMHO,

its only gets better when the economy settles down, meaning gas/oil prices stabilizes. Gas/Oil has a hand in just about everything in this world of ours. When Gas/Oil stabilizes everyone especially the poor/middle class will get a grip of their budget and be willing to venture. But as of now there's no end in sight for the cost of Black Gold.

The HBR did not publish stats by neighborhood in this paper or the Honolulu Advertiser. Why? Because most of the areas experienced double digit percent declines.

HBR and the media continues to deceive the public.

Dana Chandler, Chason Ishii and Harvey Shapiro, show the stats details.

Are you kidding? Soft landing and bumpy bottom sounds like my wife after a party. It's going to be hard on everyone and last for years. It has to look at the run up. Where is the new money going to come from?

Allison Schaefers must be getting a kick back from the realtors, appraisers and mortgage brokers. Her stories are always written through rose-colored glasses. She only quotes those who specialize in happy talk about the housing market.

A year from now, the Star-Bulletin should run a retrospective on all the failed preductions her realtor and bank economists friends made in her articles.

At least, make an effort to interview someone with credentials and a different perspective.

Pocho wrote:

IMHO,
its only gets better when the economy settles down, meaning gas/oil prices stabilizes. Gas/Oil has a hand in just about everything in this world of ours. When Gas/Oil stabilizes everyone especially the poor/middle class will get a grip of their budget and be willing to venture. But as of now there's no end in sight for the cost of Black Gold.

Goldman Sachs predicted $200 oil within a year. We may be waiting quite a while for that stabilization.

Tochee' DevilDog I think us regular people are finaly starting to think for ourselves again. Well put. Let's see how true this "soft landing" is. Thanks for the insite.]

In June 2008, Oahu had a total sales count of 787 homes and condos. Looking at your two largest real estate franchises in Hawaii, the total headcount for these two offices total 781 agents. Do the math and figure out what percentage of agents will not be taking a paycheck home come August 1st. Remember, pay is only given out when escrow closes which normally takes a minimum of 30 days. Many agents already have not seen a paycheck in July because they made no sales in the month of May. Monthly disposable income for many of these agents have now dropped below the 20% level which means that after all their monthly obligations, they only have 20% or less of their paycheck remaining which needs to be utilized for food, gas and other living necessities. It is very tough out there. I noticed over this past weekend, I received an e mail from a real estate agent in the islands in the morning on a Sunday. Normally, this agent would not even touch their computer until late in the afternoon but this shows how active they are trying to look under every rock to look for buyers and sellers - more focus these days on buyers than anything else. By the way, financial institutions are also making cuts now by eliminating a percentage of loan agents that are on board. They also work on commissions and they are struggling just like the real estate agents. Many loan agents are calling real estate agents they had done business with before and stressing to them how important it is for them to point their buyers to them for loans. The pressure the loan agents are using is to tell the real estate agents that they owe them for all the freebies they have given them under the table during the good times. There are a lot of un-kosher deals that have gone on in the loan agent/real estate agent relationship that are not above board but done under the table at the cost of the buyer, seller and sometimes both. These past practices are now under the microscope within a lot of agencies regulating this industry - state and federal. Best advice to the current real estate agents is to go commercial as I had suggested to many - nearly a year ago. But many agents thought times were really going good and they felt that they had a good handle on life. I told them what would happen if the handle fell off or broke? Well, it seems to be getting to that point today and I am sure they are having second thoughts today.

ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!

Chris wrote:

Look at who the "expert" is: a real estate agent!

I agree...never ask a real estate professional about the future of the market. They are always optimists because their livelihood depends upon clients buying.

Allison, Allison, Allison who are you working for?
The housing bubble is larger than the Savings&Loan scandal or the computer bubble.This is the kind of journalism to expect in Honolulu!

In the meantime, about 47% of all residents on O`ahu are renters - about 400,000 people. Their median family income for a family of four is about $50,000 which qualifies that family for a mortgage of about $150,000.

Remember that we talking about the pool of renters and not the entire population. Renters' incomes are significantly lower than people who currently own homes.


Where on O`ahu can approximately 50,000 four-member families (those who are at or below the qualification level) find housing to purchase?

Answer: Nowhere. And whatever housing to built will not begin to trickle into the market for several more years. The total number of units will be under 10,000 which will not begin to address the demand.

It used to be that the real estabe market used the trickle-down theory to get people into their first home. That doesn't happen anymore either.

A twin to the single-wall Kailua house built in 1959 that we rent was sold in 2001 for $175,000. Last year, the owners got $645,000 for it after replacing the flooring, the appliances, doing some minor repairs, and painting the interior & exterior.

Even if they'd spent $50k to fix it up, that's a gross profit of over $400K in just five years.

The place is back on the market in an attempt to stave off foreclosure. However, although Kailia is a desirable community, this particular Enchanted Lake neighborhood is not where anyone who could afford to spend that kind of money on a house would want to live. Even buying it for investment purposes to rent out doesn't make sense because no one can afford to pay $3000+ rent on $50,000 annual income. That's the rent being asked for another nearby house. We pay $1750.

Soft landing? I doubt it.