In light of the terrible earthquake and tsunami in Japan today, Gizmodo has a worthwhile post on iPhone and Android apps helpful to have in a disaster or emergency. Timely advice – I’m going to download these now.
Here is a video we shot recently featuring Mike McCann, one of the top real estate agents in the country, talking about what has made him successful:
Research consultancy Capital Economics (named the top economic forecaster for 2010 by the Wall Street Journal) has issued new research that finds US Housing to be historically undervalued.
Capital Economics claims that housing is 21% undervalued compared to disposable income per capita. The combination of lower property values and low mortgage rates means that monthly payments on a median priced home purchased with 20% down are now 13% of median income. Both are at historic lows.
Question is: when will the consumer feel secure enough to take advantage?
Source: DSNews.com
Interesting article in the New York Times about deliberations on the future of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae and the implications for the 30-year fixed rate mortgage. The US is unique in its reliance on the 30-year fixed, largely because of Fannie and Freddie, as the chart below shows.
And yet, although other countries experienced housing price volatility as least as great as the US during the financial crisis, their default and foreclosure experience was much less severe.
Yes, Cafe Trident has been on hiatus for a few weeks (unbearable, I know), but we are back just in time for the Friday Link Party! Herewith, links of interest from around the web of dubious value and only tangentially related to the (yet to be defined) core mission of Cafe Trident:
World’s Smallest Apartment Up For Sale
Islands are a Tough Sell in Today’s Real Estate Market
Make a Bank Deposit, Get a Can of Beer
Super-high Definition Images of Italian Masterworks
Gallery of Experimental Medical Procedures
Spooky: First Known Photograph of a Human Being
That’s it for this week. See you around!
Welcome to this week’s edition of the Cafe Trident Link Party, serving links of interest about real estate, the economy, technology, health, and other stuff that may or may not be interesting!
Existing Home Sales Up in August
CFPB’s Warren Looking to Simplify Mortgage Disclosures
5 Things About Homeowner’s Insurance
5 Futuristic Designs for Compact Homes
Stephen Colbert Testifies Before Congress
Greatest (Accidental) Inventions of All Time
The Gallery of Regrettable Food!
Thanks for attending this week’s link party. Have a good weekend and see you on Monday here at Cafe Trident.
Welcome to this week’s edition of the Cafe Trident Link Party, serving links of interest about real estate, the economy, technology, health, and other stuff that may or may not be interesting!
MIT Professor: “Home Construction is a Sleeping Giant About to Wake Up”
WSJ: 10 Reasons to Buy a House
Elizabeth Warren Named Head of New Consumer Protection Agency, Sort of
Billy Penn Not Happy: SugarHouse Opens Thursday
Curing Shortsightedness with Eye Drops?
(Almost) Real Time Flight Tracking Added to Google Earth
Rare Set of Color Photos Taken During the Great Depression
Flat Screen TV Included: $200 a Night Pet Spa
Dr. Boli’s Celebrated Magazine
Thank you for visiting, and watch this space for more exciting and generally questionable content!
Last week, in a post on Time Magazine’s downbeat cover story, “Rethinking Homeownership,” we opined that the time to get optimistic is when the mass media is most pessimistic. The time for looking up is when everyone else has their forehead on the ground.
Now comes Brett Arends in today’s Wall Street Journal with 10 Reasons to Buy a Home. Here’s the opening:
Enough with the doom and gloom about homeownership.
Sure, maybe there’s more pain to come in the housing market. But when Time magazine starts running covers that declare “Owning a home may no longer make economic sense,” it’s time to say: Enough is enough. This is what “capitulation” looks like. Everyone has given up.
We’re not saying that Mr. Arends reads Cafe Trident (nor would we be so ungracious as to point out that we had the story a full week before the WSJ caught up). Rather, we will recommend that you, as they say, read the whole thing.
Welcome to this week’s edition of the Cafe Trident Link Party, serving links of interest about real estate, the economy, technology, and other stuff that may or may not be interesting!
FTC Cracks Down on Debt Relief Companies
From Real Estate Appraiser to 16 Couches
Online Marketers Panicked by Google Instant
The Secret World of Trader Joe’s
Mmmm: Homemade Sriracha
1922 Kodachrome Film Test:
That’s it for this week. See you next Friday for another exciting Cafe Trident Link Party!
Those of you who earn your living selling or financing or otherwise serving the residential housing industry: if you have been having fun the past 3+ years, raise your hand. Uh yeah, that’s what I thought.
It has been a tough slog, no doubt about it. But as the dawn follows the darkness, sometimes the best news comes at the point of max pain, and from the most unlikely of places.
Thus, while perusing the Cold & Allergy isle at my neighborhood CVS recently, desperate to quiet the stultifying blanket of environmental antigens that had taken up residence in my head, the cover of Time Magazine caught my eye.
Oh joy! Time’s cover trumpeted “The Case Against Homeownership.” And just why would an article in a national magazine that breathlessly makes a case for “the dark side of homeownership” – citing a litany of evils including joblessness, hollowed out cities and dependence on foreign oil supposedly caused by the aforementioned homeownership – make me optimistic about the housing market?
Call it the cover story contra-indicator. When I was young and stupid, I tried my hand at making money in the stock market. Many thousands of dollars of losses later, I had learned a few things. Most importantly: everyone who is already in the market is bullish; everyone out of the market is bearish. Make sense? Why would you be invested if you thought that the market was on the way down, and vice versa?
Eventually, the bullish or bearish sentiment reaches a point that the broader media begins to take notice. But here’s the thing: they often notice at major inflection points, at the point of maximum pessimism or optimism, right at the point when the trend is about to reverse. (To understand why, remember the mass media are selling to the masses and so are naturally drawn to the prevailing meme at any given time.)
In 1979, BusinessWeek published a (now) infamous cover story titled “The Death of Equities.” Via Paul Kedrosky’s InfectiousGreed Blog comes this great graphic:
Yup, the line for the return on the Dow Jones Industrial Average goes up and to the right. The BusinessWeek cover marked the start of a 20-year bull market in stocks.
So, be of good cheer! It may not happen right away, but Time magazine may have just called the bottom in the housing market.
Cafe Trident 