I am now on the books for a 40 hour work week. This leaves me with less time to think about, and collect data on our local housing market. Separate, but certainly related, due to economic events way beyond our control, we have decided to put our home search on hold.
Thus I will be posting very infrequently from here on out (but hopefully once a week), until we decide to start up our search again. The timing seems apropos, seeing as how national economic events have completely overtaken our local housing market.
I don’t plan to continue tracking home inventory and the subsequent month’s inventory by zip code any more. Both metrics have become rather useless lately due to the influence of distressed inventory. The monthly screen scrape will continue, but I don’t plan on reporting results unless they are in some way significant.
To the tune of American Pie:
__________________________
A long, long time ago...I can still remember how
That housing data used to make me smile.
And I knew if I had my chance,
That I could make those people dance,
And maybe they'd be happy for a while.
But October made me shiver,
With every blog post I'd deliver,
Bad news on the RSS feed...
I couldn't take one more deed.
I can't remember if I cried
When I read about our wild ride
But something touched me deep inside,
The day the music died.
Soo..Bye, bye miss Average Buyer
Drove my Chevy to the levee but the levee was no higher
And good ol' boys predicting it could get dire
Singing no time to wallow in the mire,
no more time to wallow in the mire.
________________________
Best to all, on surviving our wild ride.
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9 comments:
Completely understandable. Your contribution has been tremendous and much appreciated.
The roller-coaster is wild, unpredictable and has extremely negative overtones.
Sometimes I feel like I should ignore the housing market but I feel drawn to the data and trends everyday. Sad, but true. My wife and I have tried to stop keeping an eye on the market but it only lasts a day or so.
Again, thanks, and I will continue to check for updates....
Bummer. Thanks for all the research over the last year.
How awful! Think of your fellows, forced to read my posts on aphids and the like.
A little over a year ago, comments about this being bigger than housing and foreshadowing of a much deeper and darker credit bubble bursting began to circulate. Many of us crossed our fingers and hoped for the best.
Without going into painful detail, let me just say that anyone with a family and friends has not escaped the tragedies of this debacle.
We are still waiting to hear about the offer we placed on the short sale property of a friend. If it falls through for any reason, family circumstances are such that I feel unable to commit to any further property hunting.
I'm not so much addicted to the housing blogs now as I'm morbidly fascinated by the entire financial industry and world economy.
As many of you predicted, housing markets pale in comparison.
BT, you've done yeoman's work on this blog. Thank you! Do what you can, when you can.
Thanks for understanding all. Its difficult for me to get excited about the housing market while the rest of the economy crumbles.
Each day brings some record breaking (bad) statistic. Yesterday Southwest reported its first quarterly loss in 17 years (I believe they were the only airline to make it through post 9/11 without a loss).
Yesterday Southwest reported its first quarterly loss in 17 years
But to be fair, it was a 'mark to market' loss due to fuel hedging. That is a lot different that an operational loss from a bad business model or reduced customer travel.
If Oil spikes the loss could go away, if oil continues to get cheaper, the long term operating profits will more than make up for the loss.
Either way, I didn't think it was fundamentally bad news.
But isn't that kinda the issue. Some of the best companies in their industry are now struggling due to the market turmoil.
Like cmyst, I'm morbidly drawn to the news of our financial crisis. I don't know why I even bother with listings and REOs. But beyond all of the stats on housing, you folks have created a community of average buyers who only wished we could afford the right house; if it weren't for the dang economy.
BT and spouse, you don't need stats to communicate with your community here. Just check in with your thoughts, as you've been doing. Its a great blog! Thanks!
Just felt compelled to report here, since others have, that my local family sustained its first layoff of this "downturn". But onward we go.
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