I Wrecked the Housing Market
The NYT did an interesting piece on the current (and ongoing) drop in median home prices in the US. Everyone knew that there was a downturn in the market coming, but this is going to be the worst one since they started tracking these numbers in the 50s. If you adjust for inflation, there already is a drop, but not yet if you don’t adjust (I don’t know why anyone wouldn’t when looking at financial numbers, but apparently that is common in the housing market.) The more interesting thing is that it is country wide. Normally dips happen regionally, but the midwest which generally misses out on the booms misses out on the busts as well. The most interesting chart to look at is the one that shows the adjusted for inflation housing trends. CONSTANT until the 90s. Then it starts going up for about a decade or so.
Then I buy a house. It is kind of funny, I told my real estate agent that I was buying a place to live, not an investment. This was important because my last foray into investing was at the end of the dot com boom. (Note that that investment has finally started making money for me, five or so years later. Any investing is a waiting game.) I am starting to think that people should watch what I am doing financially and short on whatever I am putting money into. OTOH, I am going to live here for a while, so hopefully this will turn around by the time I need to sell, but given that run up home price bump in the 90s I am not so sure.