You think 4% is slow, what about 5%?

[George Hatch]

I keep saying I don't know when, I just know that the market will turn at some point, and when it does it probably won't be a crash of the magnitude of the last reversal. It'll probably look like the much more mild bust of the 1990s. I don't know what more you want.

 

[Joe Flacco]

It's too bad the Fred median home price data only goes back to 1963. It would be interesting to see it go back to 1940. It shows a decline in 1971 similar to the 90's.

 

[Elliott]

I had dinner tonite on the Las Vegas Strip, so you can watch the great cross section of America walking by on a 90 degree evening. I noticed the cross section is getting a little older, a little less well dressed, and I missed the mid-west wives who use to dress to the T's and take the opportunity to almost look like they aren't with their husbands (I thought I said that nice).

The other observation was along with paying $70 to fill up the car was that we had just come out of the Great Covid-19 Epidemic and though they closed down the strip for about a year, the big corporations and casinos didn't really get hurt. So how do you really pay for all that non-productivity? You print money and give it to everybody according to their wants and needs. Now we are paying it back and its called 7% inflation, that is really 10% inflation. We'll keep paying it back for a number of years. Higher interest rates are just another way to pay it back. But it will be paid back, just like it was after the Vietnam War years.

 

[Charles West]

I had dinner tonite on the Las Vegas Strip, so you can watch the great cross section of America walking by on a 90 degree evening. I noticed the cross section is getting a little older, a little less well dressed, and I missed the mid-west wives who use to dress to the T's and take the opportunity to almost look like they aren't with their husbands (I thought I said that nice).

The other observation was along with paying $70 to fill up the car was that we had just come out of the Great Covid-19 Epidemic and though they closed down the strip for about a year, the big corporations and casinos didn't really get hurt. So how do you really pay for all that non-productivity? You print money and give it to everybody according to their wants and needs. Now we are paying it back and its called 7% inflation, that is really 10% inflation. We'll keep paying it back for a number of years. Higher interest rates are just another way to pay it back. But it will be paid back, just like it was after the Vietnam War years.

Just like WWII too only this time due to Afghanistan and Medicare, ad nauseum...

 

[Terrel L. Shields]

What do you think would have happened to interest rates if the feds had simply allow the lenders to fail?

I think what would have happened if the government had sent checks to the borrowers and let them continue to pay the bank mortgage AND allowed banks to drop reserve requirements (100% instead of 10%) for loans that were no more than 20% underwater. Many people making $1500 a month payments could have made half that in payments for a couple years until they got their feet back under them. AND we would not have seen REO prices drive down the MV of so many properties. There was plenty of houses flipped after being bought at very low prices for 100% and more above the REO price and there is no way you are going to tell me that the appreciation was 40% or more annually.

 

[Terrel L. Shields]

All I am saying is that what you have experienced in your lifetime may not be applicable to what is possibly happening.

This time it is different just like before. We understand.

It shows a decline in 1971 similar to the 90's.

I lived that decline - working for a development when the Arab embargo hit, no one came to buy lots or houses. I switched to a environmental and construction lab and in Fayetteville, I think there was only one subdivision platted that year. I tested the soil and asphalt in the subd. Most of my work was with University projects and the Federal building, that and running perk tests out of town. In Springdale, only one building permit was issued in early 73. It was dead in the water. A guy told that he worked for HUD and went into a small subdivision in Van Buren Arkansas financed by FHA and every single home had gone into foreclosure. The reason was the all electric houses were not insulated. The electric bill was more than the mortgage payment. They couldn't pay it. And a few years earlier when in High School, I was in an FFA state convention when the speaker was from an electric company touting nuclear power and claimed electricity would be so cheap that it would not be necessary to meter it, you'd only have to pay one monthly flat fee. What a pipe dream.