Crash Survival Zone

Home prices are likely to fall for the next year, then stabilize, with a rebound in 2012 as the overall economy takes off again

Americans have not seen a boring housing market since the last millennium. You know—the average, ordinary kind of market where supply just about matches demand, prices are steady, and real estate ceases [...]

and Other Useful Tips for the Homeless

By David Glenn Cox

I write this for the millions who, like myself, are holed up in basements, garages, empty houses, fields, culverts and what have you. Guilty of being Americans and homeless, trying to make it through just one more day in the land of Fuck You and the [...]

By Robert J. Shiller

Home prices in the United States have been falling for nearly three years, and the decline may well continue for some time.

Even the federal government has projected price decreases through 2010. As a baseline, the stress tests recently performed on big banks included a total fall in housing prices of 41 percent [...]

As assets, homes provide only modest annual returns in the long run.

There’s the usual talk about what the latest Case-Shiller house price data mean for the next short term move in the real estate market. Has housing bottomed? If not, has the rate of decline slowed? And when will we see an upturn?

Human nature likes [...]

Only 30 percent of foreclosed homes are currently on the market nationwide. Could the backlog of hundreds of thousands of empty or rented homes swamp recovery?

Brian Mehigan, the self-described “Mayor of Tara Lane,” knows all too well the rise and fall in real estate prices that he calls, simply, “the madness.”

One of a handful of [...]

…Rising unemployment, falling home values and diminished stock market portfolios have cut demand for home renovations, while many construction firms, idled by the collapse in new home building, look for work.

That’s driven savings for those who renovate. Despite some signs of a bottoming in the housing market, contractors coast to coast say they’re bidding jobs [...]

Builders broke ground on the fewest homes on record in April as a plunge in condominiums and apartment buildings overwhelmed the second straight gain in starts on single-family dwellings.

Housing starts unexpectedly slid 13 percent to an annual rate of 458,000, led by a 46 percent tumble in multifamily starts, which tend to be more volatile, [...]

Normally I would just add this article to  Joe’s excellent post, but  this point is so important that it deserves its own section.

“Three out of four U.S. homeowners think the worst is over in the housing market.

And half of the homeowners in Southern states – including Texas – say home prices will stabilize in their [...]

Home prices in the U.S. dropped the most on record in the first quarter from a year earlier, led by California and Florida, as banks sold foreclosed properties.

The median price fell 14 percent to $169,000, the National Association of Realtors said today. Prices dropped in 134 of 152 metropolitan areas, with the deepest declines in [...]