>There's no compelling reason to try to keep house
>prices high, or get them rising again, but even flatness would hurt a
>lot of people.
>
>Doug
i shed tears for the amateur speculators. wah. wah. wah. i've been looking at houses for sale and rent -- in an area where we're not seeing the bubble burst like other places. still, my takeaway from all this -- and this I picked up mainly from real estate agents !! -- is that most of these people who are stuck with houses are stuck with them because they were speculating. wah wah wah. if there's a bailout, it out to be only for people who were ripped off and outright lied to, etc. But if it was a second home or something they put up for sale after a slam bam thank you ma'am remodel so they could make a bundle in 6 months, fuck 'em.
Our current landlord, for instance, bought this place on speculation. $219,000 pre-building rate with all the upgrades: granite, stainless, floor to ceiling tile, brazilian hardwood floors, kraftmaid, closetmaid, top of the line everything.
He started out trying to sell after a year, with a sticker price of 399,000. wah. he lowered it to 349k. then to 299k and finally sold it for $279k after a year and a half on the market. wah wah wah. the ass STILL pocketed cash -- and yet he's whining about being insulted by the offer but taking it anyway to get rid of it. And yet, the standard wisdom used to be that you wouldn't cross the threshold until you'd been in a home for 305 years -- in less than three years. In the "old daze" that was pretty much unheard of in areas where real estate prices weren't so crazy.
http://cleandraws.com Wear Clean Draws ('coz there's 5 million ways to kill a CEO)