SE becomes a group therapy/support group

I hear you, beholder. Tell you what, I'll buy your heavily depreciating apartment for 60% less than what you paid. Feel better?

I'm not selling. Why should I? I love my place.

beholder: please spare us your analysis...this board like any other real estate board is a reflection of whats currently going on in the market...since you've only been here a short amount of time you will find more bears than bulls.

You should have come on a year and a half ago...the place was full of bulls and only a smattering of bears.

what I find fascinating are all the new bulls who come on this board after the stock market has already dropped 60%...where the hell were you people 2 years ago? talk about late to the party

fimd, I saw it a year and a half ago. You see, I think what's lacking is concept of a place as home, not flippability. I think it's a fundamentally wrong approach that affected the nation. Just saying.

beholder, i could not agree with you MORE!!! maybe 10% of the threads are nice people trying to help each other with things like recommendations for movers ect. the remainder, road rage and wanna be's. but i guess that is the downside of any blog...comments like "should i go look at his apt" as opposed to "does anyone have any experience with this building". if you like it go look at it!!!!!!!!!!!
makes me sad to see some of these threads.

beholder: you are right about the change...everyone views their home as an investment now...thanks to the machinations of the federal reserve, the malfeasance of regulatory agencies and the greed of wall street and yes homebuyers, no one views their house as just as a home. Streeteasy only exists because of the change in attitude

the pendulum will swing and then people will stop viewing their home as a ticket to wealth

you are more than welcome to buy a depreciating asset.
sounds like a sound investment

oh, you own, ouch!

midtowngal: your naivete is hilarious...people are asking 1 million dollars for 800 square foot glass boxes that only 7 years ago were $400,000. people who were foolish enough to do so are likely to get destroyed...but you want to be an ostrich and pretend that isn't going on.

Thankfully there were a number of people on this board that were constantly raving about how overpriced homes were in this city and they may have saved some people from making huge mistakes that could have led to financial ruin(yes I am giving props to Stevehjx)

Once prices start to make sense then there will be more discussions about the pros/cons and neighborhoods and buildings...mmmkay

AnonMan2002, should I be ashamed that I love my home that I happened to own?
You and your "asset" mindset...

I saw a news report this weekend about a foreclosure auction & one of the purchasers said, "People are buying today & they will become millionaires." People still haven't figured out that that's how we got into this mess in the first place. Good luck to her!

beholder / midtowngal -

There are plenty of websites that are bullish on real estate and probably better suited to your sensibilities. I would start by checking out the brokerage websites (Corcoran, Elliman, BHS, etc.), and then blogs started by brokers (Bracha, AFineblog). You may take more comfort in those blogs.

Here you are more likely to find spirited debate. If it offends you, don't read it. If you want to engage in debate and provide your viewpoints/arguments, go for it. But I can tell you there are a lot of smart people on this website who will probably disagree with you.

If bad news offends you, don't read the newspapers. Don't turn on the TV. Forget about the market value of your apartment.

thanks beholder, for verbalizing what i've been thinking. i do think, however, what makes this board great over others is that posters scrutinize the market..they are sideline buyers after all, and it's great to read some of their 'passionate' posts.

however, some of the posts sound more like shorters on other finance board trying to talk a stock down, can't blame them, they want a good deal. not all of us are flippers who purchased in 2007. we actually need a home so we can focus on our primary breadmaker, our career (yes, some of us still have those, going forward) and the opportunity cost of trying to time a market (stocks included) vs. investing my time in my career and studies is too easy a choice for me, personally.

hol4, it just looks like quite a few posters here go way way way back with the same sentiment. So I don't think they are even potential buyers, sidelined or otherwise.
I just think it's sad that home became a flip-oriented commodity. That starts the domino effect: building temporary with shoddy construction, shitty materials, etc. etc.

hol4: then go and buy a place...but please stop complaining about people focusing on price of apartments...that is what Streeteasy is about for gods sake.

In case you didn't notice they have this thing where they list the prices of places, how long they have been on the market...actually if you pay $10 a month you can see the entire history of prices for home. When the market was going up homeowners and wanna be homeowners used it to measure the value of property ...now the market is going down and people are doing the same theing....did you have a problem with it when the market was going up? I wonder

"individuals who DO NOT buy a home and actively looking for justification of their reasoning."

Well, beholder, given that RE prices have declined 30-40%, inventory has swelled above 10,000, the stock market has fallen to levels unseen since 1997, Citigroup is now trading below $1/share and thousands upon thousands of people in NYC lose their jobs every month, it would seem to me that it is the people who recently purchased who are the ones searching for justification for their bad timing.

In fact, so many people have FAILED to find justification that they are either:

1) Walking away from 6-figure deposits:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/01/realestate/01walk.html?scp=1&sq=figure%20deposits&st=cse

2) Running to lawyers to get them out of their contracts:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/08/realestate/08Cov.html?ref=realestate

So you can tell yourself whatever you need to in order to sleep at night, but the truth is that if you have waited until now to pull the trigger, you would have saved yourself 25-40% in price, have significantly more selection to choose from, a lower mortgage rate and substantially more negotiating power.

How's that for justification?

And some people eat icecream three times a day.

Also, imom, were you the one requiring an unbelievably outperforming doorman?

imom: beholder has a classic justification line: since we've been on here with the same sentiment for what he/she considers a "long" time that must mean we never had the intention of buying which also means our thoughts can be ignored... we're just bitter non-homeowners after all

beholder: No. I was the one who had the common sense to see the economic tsunami coming and avoided a financial catastrophe.

beholder -- why are you reading Streeteasy blogs unless to get further insight into market pricing for NYC apartments?

And for the record, everyone on this blog has a home. Some own, some rent, but they have a home.

The question for people is how much money should they pay for their home. The answer is in market pricing, and there is information contained in these and other blogs that people find useful.

I have stated that the economics favor renting your home at the current time. The only non-quantifiable variable is the psychological benefit of ownership. Would a rational person pay twice or three times as much to buy as to rent for the psychological benefit of ownership. I don't think so.

i knew that would get the everyone going.. like shooting fish in a barrel

iMom sure likes lashing out at people who happily own their homes. Telling.

LICComment: Actually, I like lashing out at people who make bad predictions but can't fess up when they've been proven wrong.

LICComment: i'll pay you $0.20 on the dollar for your home and rent it back to you. deal?

Dear Beholder, is it not that you wish you had been a little more savvy and did not pull the trigger earlier. SE has been a great way of checking the pulse of the market an calling the bluff of bulls and maniacs over the last two years. In any case, your comments are welcome, this is not a forum to decide who is wrong or right, we still uphold your constitutional right.

To use terms such as group therapy, what can i say.. don't you also need some?

Don't sulk now, i won't charge you

beholder, very glad you made the correct for your own personal situation.

Having said that, the American dream of home ownership has become a nightmare for millions of families (#s escalating rapidly as we speak) and the US economy in general. I fail to see the attraction of this scenario.

My personal decision was to sell when the iron was extremely hot and currently reside in a terrific apt. and by no means miss owning air space in a bubble deflating market. Buying again will be little trouble in the future. I suspect that with patience, the majority should be able to afford a much nicer space than otherwise would of been the case a year or two back. Ultimately, it seems to be happy ending for current owners and those that currently are not.

Two kinds of people in the world, those that feel good about themselves by bringing others up, and those that feel good about themselves by bringing others down.
What happened to LIVING and ENJOYING your home.
And curious, to all the markets wizards out there, how much did you make by shorting the market pre august?

"By the look of it, a large chunk of threads becomes a support group for a strange bunch of people, namely individuals who DO NOT buy a home and actively looking for justification of their reasoning."

For years, this and every real estate board was a place for justification of folks buying homes in what has been pretty clearly shown to be a bubble. Anyone who said otherwise was generally skewered (see old dco threads).

The folks who didn't buy don't need to look for justification, their move has been shown to be the right one (for whatever they did it for).

It also happens to be a place for those who made the mistake to lash out at those who didn't. This thread seems to represent that.

"And curious, to all the markets wizards out there, how much did you make by shorting the market pre august?"

Wow, talk about immature.

"Yes, I was the one who broke the cookie jar... but you are ugly!"

As I said... folks who made mistakes lashing out at those who didn't make that same mistake.

midtowngal: I went ALL-CASH back in July 2008 even in my 401-K, so I've been completely unaffected by the downturn in the markets. Wish I had bought gold and shorted oil, but my expertise is not in commodities so I didn't feel comfortable enough going out on a limb while the rest of the world was blowing up. I moved some cash out of my Citibank accounts and into Chase and BofA when C broke through $5. I may be moving some cash out of BofA and into Chase now that BofA may be in trouble. All in all, dodged a huge bullet by getting out of the markets and now enjoy 25-40% more purchasing power as RE prices have come down.

beholder it seems you are using this thread as your own personal support group. You are looking for: Owners Who Hate Renters Because They Will Not Pay Us (or Validate for Us) What We Think Our Homes are Worth.

christ, judging by the fact that beholder and midtowngal felt the need to start/post on this thread, I would think they are not dealing well at all emotionally with the market decline. May make sense for them to start a thread just for apartment owners to comfort one another.

beatyerputz: wrong. It's fun. I'm writing something that this board unintentionally helped me with. Thank you.

iMom, you da man. uh, woman, good for you.

midtowngal - since you ask, I also have done relatively well by staying heavily in cash, though admittedly have caught a couple falling knives. Far far better than seeing my apartment value decline by 25-30% and my equity decline by 100%. So net net I am also way ahead of the game by not having purchased an apartment. Feel pretty good about it!

i bought prosharea, short and ultra short.
but what do i know

Well done, midtowngal. But let me get this straight:

It's okay to boast about shorting the market, as you've just done, but for some reason it's sad to take pleasure in a declining NYC real estate market? Or even to talk about it?

Can't have your cake and eat it too, sweetheart. Look, you can be happy that the equity markets have fallen and we'll all be very happy that real estate values are plummeting. Everyone's a winner!

midtowngal: So your ETF gains offset some of the decline in the value of your apartment. Good for you.

what good is cake if you can not eat it??? never understood that- LOL
for the record, i'm not happy about the falling market. if the market was great and people had not lost their jobs it would have been the money in the shorts would have been the best loss ever.
i'm outta here
later gaters

... and in a frenzy of contradictions, midtowngal is summarily dispatched...

Fly away little butterfly....fly-fly-fly!

I want to buy.
I have wanted to buy for the last 5 years. I just felt that the train had left the station without me. So here I sit with my ear to the track waiting for the train to pull back into the station, making sure I get my head off the track in time. I am an amature making the single largest purchase of my life.
Is there another web-site for me?..........bitch

beholder, you are writing something based on anonymous postings on a message board? I hope it's a comedy.