Article in NYT illustrates real estate bubble.

[edhopper]

This article in todays Times makes it clear to me that we have an enormous housing bubble.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/01/national/01spec.html?

Everything from rapid rise of prices to a large portion of real estate being bought by speculators. It's not if it will burst, its when and how big.

[The White Tree]

1. If I didn't love my house

I think I'd sell it now and move into an apartment for a year. Then when the bubble does burst I'd buy something and reap the huge profit. My latest property tax statement has the value of my home listed at about double what I bought it for 6 years ago and that is with no major renovations that would have been assessed. The previous owner had owned it for 5 years prior to me and it only appreciated about 15 or 20% and they added on a fully roofed gazebo to the back deck and did extensive landscaping.

That doesn't seem right.

[Warpy]

2. Right, and in which markets

There hasn't been much of a bubble here, as developers keep slapping up instant slums on the eduge of the city, cheap little houses with nothing facing the street but huge expanses of garage door. The relative oversupply of single family housing here has kept prices fairly low, although my area in the inner city is beginning to appreciate a little as sharper folks realize the days of cheap gas and a 60 mile commute to work are numbered. Some areas of the country won't see much of an effect from the bicoastal bubble bursting; people who traded up to bigger heaps of masonry every three years while they ran up credit card debt to buy necessities are going to be the worst hurt.

The area that will affect us all is banking, I'm afraid, as the big monopoly banks on both coasts (which have now bought up most of the banking industry nationwide, thanks Ronnie) take huge hits, and that's likely to hurt us all as they find ways to gouge small depositors even more than they're now doing.

It's going to be one hell of a bumpy decade coming up.