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发帖数: 416 | 1 【 以下文字转载自 Living 讨论区 】
发信人: fulcrum (Flanker), 信区: Living
标 题: Housing Crash Is Hitting Cities Once Thought to Be Stable
发信站: BBS 未名空间站 (Mon Feb 14 14:59:25 2011, 美东)
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Housing-Crash-Is-Hitting-nytimes-
SEATTLE — Few believed the housing market here would ever collapse. Now
they wonder if it will ever stop
slumping.
The rolling real estate crash that ravaged Florida and the Southwest is
delivering a new wave of distress to
communities once thought to be immune — economically diversified cities
where the boom was relatively
restrained.
In the last year, home prices in Seattle had a bigger decline than in Las
Vegas. Minneapolis dropped more
than Miami, and Atlanta fared worse than Phoenix.
The bubble markets, where builders, buyers and banks ran wild, began falling
first, economists say, so they
are close to the end of the cycle and in some cases on their way back up.
Nearly everyone else still has
another season of pain.
“When I go out and talk to people around town, they say, ‘Wow, I thought
we were going to have a 12
percent correction and call it a day,’ ” said Stan Humphries, chief
economist for the housing site Zillow,
which is based in Seattle. “But this thing just keeps on going.”
Seattle is down about 31 percent from its mid-2007 peak and, according to
Zillow’s calculations, still has as
much as 10 percent to fall. Mr. Humphries estimates the rest of the country
will drop a further 5 and 7
percent as last year’s tax credits for home buyers continue to wear off.
“We went into 2010 feeling gangbusters, thanks to Uncle Sam,” Mr.
Humphries said. “We ended it feeling
penniless, with home values tanking.”
The fact that even a fairly prosperous area like Seattle was ensnared in the
downturn shows just how much
of a national phenomenon the crash has been. The slump began when the low-
quality loans that drove the
latter stage of the boom began to go bad, but the resulting recession
greatly enlarged the crisis. Many
people could not get a mortgage, and others simply gave up the hunt.
Now, though the overall economy seems to be mending, housing remains
stubbornly weak. That presents a
vexing problem for the Obama administration, which has introduced several
initiatives intended to help
homeowners, with mixed success.
CoreLogic, a data firm, said last week that American home prices fell 5.5
percent in 2010, back to the
recession low of March 2009. New home sales are scraping along the bottom.
Mortgage applications are
near a 15-year low, boding ill for the rest of the winter.
It has been a long, painful slide. At the peak, a downturn in real estate in
Seattle was nearly unthinkable. In
September 2006, after prices started falling in many parts of the country
but were still increasing here, The
Seattle Times noted that the last time prices in the city dropped on a
quarterly basis was during the severe
recession of 1982.
Two local economists were quoted all but guaranteeing that Seattle was
immune “if history is any
indication.” A risk index from PMI Mortgage Insurance gave the odds of
Seattle prices dropping at a
negligible 11 percent.
These days, the mood here is chastened when not downright fatalistic. If a
recovery depends on a belief in
better times, that seems a long way off.
Those who must sell close their eyes and hope for the best. Those who hope
to buy see lower prices but
often have lighter wallets, removing any sense of urgency.
Arne Klubberud and Melissa Lee-Klubberud paid $358,000 for a new, 960-square
-foot townhouse on
trendy Capitol Hill a few weeks after that Seattle Times article was
published. Now, with one child and with
hopes for more, they need more space. They just put the townhouse on the
market for $300,000.
“Obviously, this is not the ideal situation,” said Ms. Lee-Klubberud, a 32
-year-old lawyer. They are hoping
to take advantage of the sour market to buy at a good price, but first, they
must sell for an amount that is
acceptable. “Everyone has their limits,” she said. “We have ours.”
On a dark, dank Sunday, a handful of people came to look at the three-level
unit. One of them was
Katherine Davis, who had just sold her house in the far eastern suburbs. It
took 14 months, during which
she had to drop the price several times. The equity she had accumulated over
the decades disappeared
quickly.
“At first, I thought it would be nice to come out of this with $200,000,
but I adjusted my expectations,” Ms.
Davis said. She ended up with less than half of that. Her goal is to buy a
small place in the city, but not yet.
“Selfishly, I’m hoping the market continues to drop,” she said.
Increasing numbers of sellers are simply surrendering.
Megan and Ryan Dortch tried to sell their one-bedroom Eastlake condo for $
325,000 two years ago. They
rejected an offer of $295,000 as inadequate. A year later, they relisted it
for $289,000, then $279,000,
which was less than they paid. Without a sale at that price, they could not
afford to buy a place big enough
for them and their new baby.
They have given up on real estate. They are renting out their old apartment
at a small loss every month, and
living in a rented house. “I don’t expect the market to get better,” said
Ms. Dortch, 31, a customer service
consultant.
Neither does Gene Burrus, another frustrated seller who became a landlord.
“Rent is so cheap it doesn’t
make sense to buy now,” he said. He might reconsider if 10 or 15 percent
more comes out of the market.
Redfin, a real estate brokerage firm based in Seattle, says foot traffic
began picking up in the last several
weeks. Mortgage rates are rising, which could nudge those who need to buy to
make a deal now for fear
rates will rise even more.
But whenever the market finally does pick up, all those accidental landlords
will want to unload, putting
another burden on the market. “So many sellers are waiting in the shadows,
” said Redfin’s chief executive,
Glenn Kelman. “The inventory is going to expand and expand and expand. I
don’t see any basis for
significant price increases.”
While almost every economist is expecting another round of price declines
for the next few months, many
see a leveling off in the second half of the year. Fiserv, the company that
produces the monthly Case-
Shiller Home Price Indexes, analyzed prices in 375 communities. About three-
quarters of them will be
stable by December, Fiserv calculates.
“We’re at a period near the bottom but with more volatility than we
normally see at this point,” said David
Stiff, Fiserv’s chief economist. “This sort of double dip is unprecedented
for housing.”
Maybe that is why belief in a bottom is as elusive now as fears of a top
were in 2006.
“We would love to have a house,” said Dan Cunningham, a 41-year-old renter
. “I have more than enough
for a down payment. I’m preapproved for a loan. But I have to have
confidence it’s not going to lose another
20 percent.” He plans to wait until he sees prices rising before making any
offers. |
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