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Articles about housing bubble (0-50 of 401)

  • The Appropriate Discount Rate For Residential Real Estate Analysis
    By: Lawrence Roberts | - The investment value of a property can only be measured against other investment opportunities available to an investor. If investors can earn 4.5% by investing in government treasuries, they will demand a higher return to invest in an asset as volatile and as illiquid as residential real estate. The rate of return an investor demands is called a "discount rate."

    The discount rate is different for each investor as each will have different tolerances for risk. During the housing b ...

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  • Residential Real Estate Investment Value - How Is It Calculated?
    By: Lawrence Roberts | - The United States Department of Labor Bureau of Labor Statistics measures the rent of primary residence (rent) and Owners' equivalent rent of primary residence (rental equivalence). They make this distinction because a house has both a consumptive purpose and an investment purpose. The consumptive value is measured by rent or rental equivalence. There is legitimate financial reason to pay more than the rental equivalence price. The normal rate of house appreciation, not the unsustainable kind wi ...
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  • Home Mortgage Borrowers Are Not That Sophisticated
    By: Lawrence Roberts | - When lenders develop new loan programs, they assume borrowers are sophisticated enough to understand the product and disciplined enough to use them properly. Both assumptions are bad, and these bad assumptions caused lenders and investors to lose a great deal of money during the housing bubble.

    Whenever lenders start loaning people money with total debt-to-income ratios over 36% people will default. Whenever lenders start loaning more than 80% of the purchase price, people can sin ...

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  • Predatory Lending In The Housing Bubble - Were You A Victim?
    By: Lawrence Roberts | - The most egregious examples of predatory lending occurred when interest-only loan products where offered to subprime borrowers whose income only qualified them to make the initial minimum payment (assuming the borrower actually had this income). This loan program was commonly known as the two-twenty-eight (2/28). It has a low fixed payment for the first two years, then the interest rate and payment would reset to a much higher value on a fully amortized schedule for the remaining 28 years.

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  • Conservative House Financing Is Making A Comeback!
    By: Lawrence Roberts | - Exotic loan financing terms took over mortgage finance in the housing bubble. As people using these loan programs began to default in large numbers, exotic loan programs all but disappeared. This left the 30-year, fixed-rate, conventionally amortized loan as the only game in town.

    When people decide they want to buy a house, they figure out how much they can afford, then they search for something they want in their price range. For most people, what they can "afford" depends almos ...

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  • Prime, Alt-a And Subprime - The Three Categories Of Borrowers
    By: Lawrence Roberts | - Borrowers are broadly categorized by the characteristics of their payment history as reflected in their FICO score. FICO risk scores are developed and maintained by the Fair Isaac Corporation utilizing a proprietary predictive model based on an analysis of consumer profiles and credit histories. These models are updated frequently to reflect changes in consumer credit behavior and lending practices. The FICO score is reported by the three major credit reporting agencies, Experian, Equifax and Tr ...
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  • Have California House Prices Always Been Crazy?
    By: Lawrence Roberts | - Volatility in real estate prices is not new to California. During the 1970s, real estate prices detached from typical valuations of three-times yearly income seen in the rest of the country. Once residents realized they could push up prices in their real estate markets to dizzying heights, they have been doing it ever since. Greed springs eternal.

    In the late 1970s prices rose to nearly five-times yearly income in a widespread real estate bubble. After the crash, prices stabilize ...

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  • Should You Worry About The Opportunity Cost Of A Housing Downpayment?
    By: Lawrence Roberts | - The initial equity in a home is equal to a purchaser's downpayment. If a buyer pays cash for a home, all equity is initial equity. There is an opportunity cost associated with downpayment money. This cost should be considered when someone considers buying residential real estate.

    In the aftermath of a financial fiasco, lenders return to the practices that did not fail them in the past. The only program lenders know empirically to be stable is a 30-year, fixed-rate, conventionally ...

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  • Where Is The Epicenter Of The Housing Bubble?
    By: Lawrence Roberts | - The epicenter of the housing bubble is located in Irvine, California. One of the primary causes of the bubble was the lowering of lending standards and the extension of credit to people who could not handle the responsibility: Subprime borrowers. The word "subprime" has become indelibly linked to the housing bubble. It is one of the causal factors that make the bubble unique, and the collapse of subprime is widely regarded as the pin-prick which began the bubble's deflation.

    Irvi ...

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  • The Housing Bubble Was A Massive Real Estate Ponzi Scheme
    By: Lawrence Roberts | - People have not fully grasped the changes that will result from the deflation of the housing bubble. There are many historic parallels with the closest being The Great Depression. When the stock market bubble of the 1920s began to deflate in late 1929, few thought the boom times of the decade were over, and even fewer saw the disaster coming of The Great Depression. The 2008/2009 recession will not likely reach the severity of The Great Depression, but it will signal the end to the lifestyle to ...
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  • People Will Not Want Mortgage Debt In The Future
    By: Lawrence Roberts | - The next big psychological change to impact housing will be a change in homebuyer's relationship with debt. When prices were going up, and nobody thought they were going to have to pay the debt off themselves, people borrowed all they could. Once prices stopped going up, and people were faced with paying off these enormous debts, the appetite for borrowing cooled significantly.

    Equity can be created in a home in two ways: you can pay down the debt, and the house price can apprecia ...

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  • The Key To Housing Affordability Is Not Mortgage Finance
    By: Lawrence Roberts | - The difficult problem with affordable housing is how to provide it without making it unaffordable. Finance is not the answer. We all want affordable housing. There are numerous government programs designed to provide low-cost rental and ownership properties to people in all walks of life. Lenders, builders, realtors and buyers all benefit from affordable housing because affordability means an increase in transaction volumes and more money into the pockets of those dependant on the real estate ma ...
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  • Regulating The National Association Of Realtors Would Help Prevent The Next Housing Bubble
    By: Lawrence Roberts | - The sales tactics of the National Association of Realtors should be examined and potentially come under the same restrictions as securities brokers through the Securities and Exchange Commission. Realtors routinely lie about the investment potential of residential real estate. People believe these lies and enter into transactions that often harm them financially.

    After the stock market crash which helped precipitate the Great Depression, Congress created the Securities and Exchan ...

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  • Regulatory Solutions To Prevent The Next Housing Bubble
    By: Lawrence Roberts | - The regulatory solution proposed herein is simple, yet far reaching. It comes in two parts, the first is to limit the amount lenders can loan to borrowers with a rather unique enforcement mechanism, and the second is to increase the penalties for borrowers who commit mortgage fraud. The following is not in legalese, but it contains the conceptual framework of potential legislation that could be enacted on the state and/or federal level. A detailed discussion of the text follows:

    L ...

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  • Changing Appraisal Methods Would Prevent The Next Housing Bubble
    By: Lawrence Roberts | - Investor confidence in the market for CDOs and all mortgages was shaken during the decline of the housing bubble, and rightly so. Investors were losing huge sums, and nobody clearly understood why. There was a widespread belief these losses were caused by some outside factor rather than a systemic problem enabled by the lenders and investors themselves.

    For investor confidence to return to this market, investors must first ascertain a more accurate evaluation of potential losses ...

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  • Housing Bubble Economic Problems - Have We Seen The Worst?
    By: Lawrence Roberts | - The foremost problem resulting from the deflation of the housing bubble was the imperilment of our banking and financial system. The bailouts emanating from Congress have mostly focused on keeping the banking system solvent. Considering most institutions were secretly bankrupted by the housing collapse, this was not small problem. The economic ramifications are severe, and 2009 will likely not be the end of the crisis.

    The Great Depression was precipitated by the collapse of margi ...

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  • Housing Bubble Causes - Why Did It Happen?
    By: Lawrence Roberts | - The housing bubble was caused by an expansion of credit that enabled irrational exuberance and wild speculation. The expansion of credit came in the form of relaxed loan underwriting terms including high debt-to-income ratios, lower FICO scores, high combined-loan-to-value lending including 100% financing, and loan terms permitting negative amortization.

    Addressing the conditions of expanding credit is a legitimate focus for intervention in the credit markets. Another major lendi ...

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  • Future Housing Bubbles - Should We Prevent Them?
    By: Lawrence Roberts | - The deflation of housing bubbles is very financially and emotionally painful, and if possible, they should be avoided. The pain of the deflation of a housing bubble cannot be avoided by trying to keep the bubble inflated, or by trying to deflate it slowly. The only way to avoid these problems is to prevent the bubble from inflating in the first place through some form of intervention in the mortgage market. Intervention can take the form of a market-based intervention demanded by investors and r ...
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  • The Housing Bubble - What Buyers Need To Know
    By: Lawrence Roberts | - During the decline of house prices in the deflation of the housing bubble, price levels will fall to fundamental valuations of historic levels of appreciation, price-to-rent ratios, and price-to-income ratios. The nominal price declines may be impacted by inflation and monetary policy of the Federal Reserve, but inflation adjusted prices will fall precipitously.

    As people put less money toward housing payments either by choice or by tightening lender standards, prices will not be ...

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  • Foreclosures And Residential Real Estate Markets
    By: Lawrence Roberts | - The number of foreclosures will affect both the timing and the severity of the deflation of the housing bubble. It is foreclosures that drive prices lower quickly. Foreclosures control the timing of the crash because they directly impact the must-sell inventory numbers: the greater the number of foreclosures, the greater the rate of decline in house prices. By early 2008, most real estate markets had already surpassed the peak set in the price decline of the early 90s of Notices of Default and T ...
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  • Unemployment And Residential Real Estate Markets
    By: Lawrence Roberts | - Prior to the housing bubble, house price declines had only been associated with economic downturns and increases in unemployment. As people lost jobs, they lost their ability to make house payments, and many lost their homes in foreclosure. Unemployment is devastating to housing markets.

    When the economy softens, wage growth slows down as employers are less able to pay higher wages and the competition for available work makes people less able to demand higher wages from their empl ...

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  • Future Loan Terms And Residential Real Estate Markets
    By: Lawrence Roberts | - One of the primary mechanisms for inflating the housing bubble was the widespread use of exotic loan terms including interest-only and negative-amortization adjustable rate mortgages. The appeal of interest-only and negative-amortization loans is the lower payments they offer, or their ability to finance larger sums of money with the same payment. These loan terms are unstable, and they may not be offered to future buyers. If these loan programs were eliminated, the financing sums would decline, ...
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  • Housing Bubble Credit Expansion - Credit Inflated The Housing Bubble
    By: Lawrence Roberts | - The housing bubble was inflated by a massive expansion of credit and the influx of capital into residential mortgages. The expansion of credit took four forms: lower interest rates, lowering or eliminating qualification requirements, different amortization methods, and higher allowable debt-to-income ratios.

    Lower interest rates expand credit by allowing larger sums to be borrowed with the same payment amount. In 2000, the interest rate on a 30-year mortgage was 8.05%, and in 200 ...

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  • It Is Different This Time... Not!
    By: Lawrence Roberts | - Each time the general public creates an asset bubble, they believe the rally in prices is justifiable by fundamentals. When proven methods of valuation demonstrate otherwise, people invent new ones with the caveat, "it is different this time." It never is.

    In every asset bubble people will claim the prices are supported by fundamentals even at the peak of the mania. Stock analysts were issuing buy recommendations on tech stocks in March of 2000 when valuations were so extreme tha ...

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  • Residential Real Estate Markets Crumble From The Bottom Up
    By: Lawrence Roberts | - The real estate market can be visualized as a massive pyramid. There are very few multi-million dollar properties at the top of the pyramid, and a large number of relatively inexpensive entry-level properties forming the base. Like any structure, if the foundation is weakened, the structure may collapse. In the same way, housing markets collapse from the bottom up due to problems with affordability.

    The foundation of a residential real estate market is the entry-level buyer. Entr ...

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  • Mortgage Interest Rates And House Prices
    By: Lawrence Roberts | - Mortgage interest rates are determined in an open market and are subject to the forces of supply and demand. These rates are the sum of three main components: riskless rate of return, risk premium, and inflation expectation. The housing bubble was characterized by historic lows in the federal funds rate, risk premiums and inflation expectations which resulted in the very low mortgage interest rates. These low mortgage interest rates allowed people to finance large sums of money, and these larger ...
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  • Price-to-rent Ratio For Housing Is Like The Price-to-earnings Ratio For Stocks
    By: Lawrence Roberts | - Just as stocks have price-to-earnings ratios (PE Ratios) used to establish relative value, houses have a price-to-rent ratio to establish relative value. Rent is the income or potential earnings a property can produce. It does not matter if the property is rented or if an owner lives in the property. The potential for rent is equal to the potential for earning.

    When a property can be rented for an amount equaling its monthly cost of ownership, it is at rental parity. This is the b ...

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  • Financial Innovation Is A Fallacy
    By: Lawrence Roberts | - When the lending industry developed exotic loan products, they touted them as "innovation," and they sold these toxins far and wide. Since these loans achieved the highest default rates ever recorded, it is apparent the "innovations" of the bubble rally were not entirely successful. The cutting edge is sharp. Innovators often pay a heavy price for attempts at advancement. Sometimes these advances lead to quantum leaps in human knowledge and understanding. Sometimes the time, effort, and money ar ...
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  • Flip That House... Not!
    By: Lawrence Roberts | - During the Great Housing Bubble, many speculators tried to make money through trading houses. The vast majority of these traders were not professionals but amateurs who thought they could be professionals. Most amateurs ended up losing money because they did not understand what it takes to be successful in a speculative market.

    The first and most obvious difference in the investment strategy between professional traders and the amateurs in the general public is their holding time ...

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  • They Aren't Making Any More Land... Not!
    By: Lawrence Roberts | - All market pricing is a function of supply and demand. One of the reasons many house price bubbles get started is due to a temporary shortage of housing units. This is a particular problem in California because the entitlement process is slow and cumbersome. Supply shortages can become acute, and prices can rise very quickly. This does not mean land is scarce. It means that the supply of dwelling units is experiencing a temporary shortage. It may seem like a minor distinction, but it is very imp ...
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  • Inflation And Home Equity - What Is The Relationship?
    By: Lawrence Roberts | - House prices historically have outpaced inflation by 0.7% nationally. In a normal market, this is the only appreciation homeowners obtain. This appreciation is caused by wage inflation translating into higher housing payments and the ability of borrowers to obtain larger loan amounts to bid up prices. In some areas where wage growth has outpaced the general rate of inflation, the fundamental valuation of houses has increased faster than inflation.

    Of course, inflation also erodes ...

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  • Stated-income Loans - How Common Were They?
    By: Lawrence Roberts | - One unique phenomenon of the Great Housing Bubble was the utilization of stated-income loans, also known as "liar loans" because most people were not truthful when stating their income. When house prices were going up, greed motivated many people to buy homes to capture appreciation. Actually having the income to qualify for a loan was a limitation to participating in the financial mania. Stated-income loan programs eliminated this barrier and allowed people to borrow as much as they wanted with ...
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  • House Prices Are Supported By Fundamentals... Not!
    By: Lawrence Roberts | - In every asset bubble people will claim the prices are supported by fundamentals even at the peak of the mania. During the Great Housing Bubble, people believed everyone was making two-times their actual income, and that the unstable loan programs developed during the time were innovations that changed the fundamentals. It was all nonsense.

    Stock analysts were issuing buy recommendations on tech stocks in March of 2000 when valuations were so extreme that the semiconductor index f ...

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  • The Interest-only, Adjustable-rate Mortgage Is Very Risky
    By: Lawrence Roberts | - The interest-only, adjustable-rate mortgage (IO ARM) became popular early in the housing bubble. When fixed-rate mortgage payments were too large for buyers to afford, they turned to IO ARMs as an affordability product. Unfortunately, these mortgage products are not stable because at some point, payments increase, and the borrowers often default.

    A fixed-rate conventionally-amortized mortgage requires the borrower to repay part of the mortgage balance with each payment. If this re ...

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  • Real Estate Speculators Usually Fail
    By: Lawrence Roberts | - Despite the huge price spike in the final two years of the housing bubble caused by wild speculation, most speculators will lose a great deal of money. They will buy when prices are high, and they will sell when prices are low. The causes are rooted in basic human emotions that work against making the proper decisions to profit in a speculative market.

    The moment a speculative asset is purchased and the speculator has taken a position in the market, emotions are immediately in pl ...

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  • Housing Bubble - Why Should Anyone Care?
    By: Lawrence Roberts | - Why should anyone care about financial bubbles in general and the housing bubble in particular? The first and most obvious reason is that the financial fallout is stressful. Many people lost a great deal of money. Beyond that, the housing bubble had enormous impact on the health of individuals, families and entire communities.

    People buying into a financial mania too late, particularly in a residential housing market, will probably end up in foreclosure and most likely in a bankru ...

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  • Real Estate Bubble Fallacies - Can You Identify Them?
    By: Lawrence Roberts | - There are a number of fallacies about residential real estate that either affirm the belief in perpetually rising prices or minimize the fears of a price decline. These fallacies generally revolve around a perceived shortage of housing or a belief that the higher prices are justified by current or future economic conditions. These misperceptions are not the core mechanism of an asset price bubble, but they serve to affirm the core beliefs and perpetuate the price rally.

    The main c ...

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  • Unaffordable House Prices, Will It Last Forever?
    By: Lawrence Roberts | - During the housing bubble, prices detached from their fundamental valuations and became very inflated. This price inflation created a situation where affordability dropped to record low levels in many real estate markets. The fear of buyers was that failure to purchase a property would mean they would never be able to own because they would be priced out forever. For this fear to be realized, prices much sustain inflated levels of low affordability forever. Is this possible?

    All m ...

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  • Lose Your Money Or Learn To Identify Asset Bubbles
    By: Lawrence Roberts | - Many people did not see the NASDAQ tech-stock bubble. Many people did not see the great housing bubble either. Those who participated in either financial mania lost a great deal of money. People need to know what to look for in order to avoid future financial manias.

    A financial bubble is a temporary situation where asset prices become elevated beyond any realistic fundamental valuations because the general public believes current pricing is justified by probable future price incr ...

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  • Interest Rate Resets On An Adjustable Rate Mortgages Are A Problem
    By: Lawrence Roberts | - Many people took out adjustable rate mortgages during the housing bubble. After 25 years of steadily declining interest rates, people forgot about, or never knew about the risk of rising interest rates and what it would do to their housing payments. Adjustable rate mortgages are great while interest rates are declining. Their payments are lower than fixed rate mortgages, and as interest rates decline, they become an even better deal. However, when interest rates go up again, these loans will bec ...
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  • Real Estate Investment Versus Real Estate Speculation - What Is The Difference?
    By: Lawrence Roberts | - Owner-occupied residential real estate is viewed by many people as a good investment. Realtors often use this idea as part of their sales pitch. This view is fallacious and it is one of the beliefs responsible for creating an asset price bubble. To understand why houses are not a great investment in most circumstances, one needs to understand the difference between investment and speculation.

    An investment is an asset purchased to obtain a predictable and consistent cashflow. This ...

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  • Higher Interest Rates And Residential Real Estate Markets - What Would Happen?
    By: Lawrence Roberts | - A key factor impacting the fundamental value of housing and thereby the bottom is interest rates. Higher interest rates would devastate residential real estate markets. When interest rates go up, the amounts borrowed go down assuming a consistent payment. As amounts borrowed go down, so do real estate prices.

    Interest rates went down during the price decline in the early 90s. That softened the impact and made the decline take somewhat longer. When interest rates are declining, bub ...

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  • Hyperinflation And The Housing Market
    By: Lawrence Roberts | - The Federal Reserve under Ben Bernanke began aggressively lowering interest rates at the end of 2007 in response to the severe economic downturn caused by the collapse of house prices and the related difficulties falling house prices had on the banks and other institutions that made loans using houses as collateral. Many are concerned that these policies will ignite a period of hyperinflation in the United States.

    Bernanke, prior to taking the position as the chairman of the Feder ...

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  • Housing Market Bottom - Price-to-income Ratio Estimates
    By: Lawrence Roberts | - One method used to evaluation residential real estate prices is the price-to-income ratio. Since people borrow the vast majority of the funds necessary to purchase residential real estate, and this borrowing must be financed from current income, the ratio of house prices to rent is a useful barometer of market valuation.

    Since incomes and rents are closely related, evidence for the housing bubble that appears in the price-to-rent ratio also appears in the price-to-income ratio. Na ...

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  • Housing Market Bottom - Price-to-rent Ratio Estimates
    By: Lawrence Roberts | - Comparative rent is the primary method of evaluating the fundamental value of any property. The price-to-rent ratio links the cost of ownership with the cost of rental. This link is direct because possession of property can be obtained by either method. The cost of ownership encapsulates all of the financing terms and other variables associated with possession of real estate as does the cost of rental. Price-to-rent ratio fluctuates over time as changes in the cost of ownership and terms of fina ...
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  • Housing Market Bottom - Price Action Estimates
    By: Lawrence Roberts | - Most market participants focus on price action. The price-to-price feedback mechanism largely responsible for bubble market behavior gathers its strength from an awareness of market pricing, and the widespread belief that short-term, past price performance is predictive of long-term, future price performance. It is a fallacy that is often reinforced in the short-term as irrational exuberance takes over in a market, but over the long term, short-term price movements rarely correspond to long-term ...
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  • Future House Prices Are Dependent Upon Future Loan Terms
    By: Lawrence Roberts | - Every homebuyer operating in the deflation of the housing bubble needs to consider what loan terms will be available in the future. At some point, most buyers become sellers. The future buyer will likely need to borrow most of the money necessary to complete a real estate transaction. The availability of credit and the loan terms this future buyer will face is the primary determinant of the price this buyer will pay for real estate.

    During the rally of the housing bubble, buyers d ...

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  • Fundamental House Value, What Are Houses Really Worth?
    By: Lawrence Roberts | - The fundamental value of all housing prices is equivalent rents. Rents define the fundamental value of real estate because rental is a direct proxy for ownership; both rental and ownership provide for possession of property. Most people believe comparable sales define the value of real estate. In reality, comparable sales measure the collective foolishness of buyers who often have no idea what a property is really worth.

    Equivalent rents are a major component of the United States ...

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  • Housing Bubbles As Cultural Pathology
    By: Lawrence Roberts | - What is a Cultural Pathology? There are certain beliefs if widely held and acted upon by a group of people leads inevitably to collective suffering and personal destruction. The housing bubble was a form of cultural pathology. It spawned a number of beliefs and actions that caused people to lose their houses in foreclosure.

    One example of a cultural pathology is demonstrated by the American auto industry. Before the age of imported cars, the American auto industry believed the qua ...

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  • The Housing Bubble
    By: Mar | - The United States housing bubble refers to the economic bubble in real estate in the United States. This follows the stock market bubble in the 1990s which was called, among other things, the dot-com bubble. A real estate bubble or property bubble (or housing bubble for residential markets) is a type of economic bubble that occurs periodically in local or global real estate markets. It is characterized by rapid increases in the valuations of real property such as housing until they reach unsusta ...
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