Jaime- Why not pulse Creig Northrup to get his take on this data?

Are you honestly curious? :-D

I'd love to get a market prediction from Creig Northrup.

Id really rather you have him agree to a live question and answer session where he would take questions from your readers. But, I would settle for any form of HONEST discourse about market conditions. My first and foremost question is why Realtors need the crutch of home appreciation as a reason to buy? Car salesmen dont need it. Why do they continue to con people into thinking that home appreciation is some kind of wealth builder. Ask any senior citizen that has a paid off home and living on social security how "wealthy" they feel. How bout Realtors embrace the idea that home values need to come down to make homes affordable again, after all it serves their best interest. They make money on the transaction whether values rise or fall. Rooting for high home values in like rooting for a high BGE bill. Wwouldnt we all rather not have to borrow an extra 100k across the board in order to buy a home?

elweedz makes a very valid point:

The "appreciation" most people under 60 today are aware of and trumpeted as some sort of a market norm is really just about periodic inflationary trends and to some Lesser) degree an effect of population demands.

The actual product in question -the house- is actually a depreciating asset almost exactly as an automobile is.

To avoid escalated depreciation of the asset a continuing reinvestment in general upkeep, repairs, and replacement of worn out fixtures and equipment is needed.

The best net effect to be realized (monetarily) is a zero sum gain but these economic considerations are antithetical to the reasons to buy a house: which is having a place to create a home to raise your family in and by extension of that a static real thing to share with your children.

You have to live somewhere and the economic value of that choice has to be made on a rational basis using TODAY's budget and affordability. For too many that simply precludes home-ownership but for those who can scrape up the responsible down-payments the mortgage obligation must till be limited to a hard and practical percentage of their income.

But this still applies to non owners too whose rent payments will be applied to a different mortgage.

All that said... I'm even less positive that the property prices, working income and unemployment trifecta will EVER get back into alignment.

Jamie,

What would it take for you to start substituting the word "improve" with "increase," and also substitute any "pessimistic" equivalences with "decrease?"

To Mr Rational,

You can still make money with RE only tracking inflation because a mortgage allows for lots of leverage. With a small cash outlay, you can shelter an enormous amount of money from inflation. This of course only works because of our central planners deliberately create inflation. In a real free market economy, deflation would prevail as it did for the entire 1800's and such a strategy would not work.

Josh, I'm not talking about prices here. I know that some folks will see "improvement" as higher prices and others will see it as lower prices. So I tried to phrase the poll broadly to account for those who define the start of market recovery as increasing ~sales~. I mentioned this before, surely?

Josh- I would agree in terms of rental property. Shrewd real estate investors can and always will make money by playing landlord. My arguments were against the drivel the Realtors spout about owner occupied properties. YOu can't spend equity, only borrow against it. People dont brag about the equity in their paid off car and then clamor to get a car improvement loan. The only way to realize the equity gain is to sell in which case you would have to rent or buy in a less affluent and presumable less desireable or interesting area. Otherwise, you will need the equity to put down on a like-kind home in the same area.
All that said, landlording a few or even multiple props is a time tested way of accumulating wealth.

As a Baltimore outsider attempting to refinance Reverse Mortgages in the Baltimore area, these predictions are conservative. I have seen appraised values from just 7 months ago do a double digit decrease. I don't see doing business in this market for the next 18+ months.