A Credit Suisse survey estimates that the S&P Case-Shiller Index of house prices in 20 major cities must fall by another 14 percent for houses to become affordable again, assuming the typical mortgage rate stays around 6.32 percent. The index was down 15.8% from a year earlier in May.
If borrowing costs ease to 5.5 percent, the Case-Shiller index may have only another 7 percent to fall, Credit Suisse said, but if rates rise to 7.5 percent, house prices may tumble another 24 percent. A few our prior posts about the Case-Shiller index were:
May Home Prices Take Biggest Drop Ever
San Diego Real Estate … The Coming Next Wave of Foreclosures
Real Estate Prices Back to 2004 Levels
Home Prices … Sharpest Rate Drop in Two Decades
San Diego Home Values Fall 16.7%
Standard & Poor’s Index Shows Home-Price Declines As The Largest on Record
“They’re not making anymore land”, “It’s different in (insert your city)”, “everyone wants to live here”, “buy now or be priced out forever”…etc. These are all the lines that the sheeple have bought into from the real estate industry and all their “experts”. Bottom, line: this is the tip of the iceberg. People seem to forget history, and how it has a way of repeating itself. This is not a 1 year “slump”, this is an end to a cycle of people’s pie-in-the-sky attitude about real estate. I cannot wait to buy a house in 3-5 years, when prices are REALLY good. If you buy now, you’re overpaying. Think about it: is 20% off an item that is marked up 400% a good deal?
Diet Planner
Thanks for this information. There have been a number of published studies or reports that there are expected to be more foreclosures in 2009 because of the high number of “exploding type” loans set to go off next year. Predicting exactly when this phase will slow down or come to an end is, therefore, very difficult. We have had a number of students advise they have loans which will “explode” in 2009 and 2010 (it hurts to see this, as most of these folks could have avoided these types of financing deals had they only bothered to learn something about real estate before diving into it without the knowledge they’d most likely have picked up in any good Real Estate Principles course.
San Diego Trip Coordinator
Why do we think jeopardizing our country’s future for short term gain is a good idea? As a whole, Americans live beyond their means and rely on….credit. You can’t expect Uncle Sam to “fix” all of your personal finance problems. Time to let the chips fall where they may…
California Bail
I have followed this blog for about 4 years – everything it predicted is coming true…