25 January 2012
So now let’s look at the different cities and see really what’s happened over the past five years and even over the last year. First of all, over the last year it’s been pretty similar. In most of these major cities, that I looked in the United States, their real estate was relatively flat this year.
Let’s go and look at the city of Miami, in Florida, which it’s very expensive real estate peaked in March of 2007. From its peak to the average residential real estate prices in Miami today, the prices are down about 52.4%. Then as we go up that eastern coast we’re going to go to the city of Atlanta, Georgia, which is another major city on the eastern seaboard and we look at Atlanta and it peaked out a little bit sooner. Atlanta peaked out in December of ’06, and since then homes are down about 43%. Moving up a little farther north we go to New York , which was by far and away the most impressive city. When we got to January of 2007, prices in New York were already extremely high, and it was amazing for anyone to think that prices could go any higher for New York. Additionally, now that we’ve been in this real estate crash for a good five years you would think that New York would kind of be like Miami and go ahead and take a nice correction. Well that did not happen in the city of New York. New York home prices peaked out in December of 2006 and since then has gone down only about 10%. So the city of New York has by far and away held its home value better than any of the large cities that I researched.
Moving to the mid part of the United States we go to Chicago, Illinois. Chicago peaked out in March of ’07 and since then its home prices are down about 38%. Moving south from Chicago we go to Dallas. Dallas was the least priced city that I looked at on the average price of their homes. Dallas peaked out in July of ’07 and they saw their home values decrease 32% since then. Our final city is going to be San Francisco and it was by far the latest bloomer. We saw its real estate peak in November of 2007. Many of us are conservative in our political nature and we’d love to see that San Francisco really took a tumble and crash. Well that wasn’t the case.
By the way, all of the above research on the home prices comes from the website Zillow.com. Of course the information is not going to be 100% accurate but I do think it gives us a very good idea of the trend in home prices in each of these major cities because of how closely these large cities are able to be tracked by
this particular software.
So maybe there is positive news with the homes. Maybe we have seen home prices kind of flatten out here in 2012 and they are ready to rise again. Although on the downside there are still many foreclosures that banks want to release and you wonder how well the home market could hold up if indeed we finally see interest rates go up. So it could be interesting. We did see interest rates go up in the early 80s and that didn’t stop real estate from going up. So if history repeats itself and interest rates do go up certainly real estate can go right on up anyway but for interest rates to go up the economy is going to have to heat up.
For the economy to heat up it’s going to take people actually having jobs, making money and then spending that money. That’s what heats the economy up and I just don’t see how people can spend more money when they don’t have jobs. I don’t see how most (not all) corporations can spend more money when they’ve increased their debt during this recession. 2012 is certainly a year that many people are interested in also because of the belief about the Mayan calendar and we have our elections at the end of 2012.
The 2012 Mayan phenomenon comprises a range of eschatological beliefs according to which cataclysmic or transformative events will occur on December 21, 2012. This date is regarded as the end-date of a 5,125-year-long cycle in the Mesoamerican Long Count calendar. Various astronomical alignments and numerological formulae have been proposed as pertaining to this date, though none have been accepted by mainstream scholarship. A New Age interpretation of this transition is that this date marks the start of time in which Earth and its inhabitants may undergo a positive physical or spiritual transformation, and that 2012 may mark the beginning of a new era. I personally believe that only God the Father knows the exact time of Jesus’ Second Coming. This is just background info for you.
Maybe home prices have bottomed out and will start to rise, in 2012. In 1969, at the housing peak, 660 ounces of gold purchased a house at the median price. At the low in 1979, the cost of such a dwelling was 80 ounces of gold. In 2001, the cost was 610 ounces. Currently, a little over 100 ounces buys a home.
