Does 379 points keep SELLERS STUBBORN?

please...one day on the dow means zero...even the multi-week sucker's rally that ended earlier this year meant nothing....u need a sustained upturn in financial marksts, and financial activity to rescue man real estate....

did u think otherwise?

only if jobs report shows serious signs of rebound... at the end of the day, its about jobs

of course it means nothing...but do sellers see it as a ray of light that makes them continue to hold onto their +20% high listing prices?

You still noticed we're under 7k, right? Thats less than half of peak...

exactly! so where is the real estate that is getting close to half of peak?

sniper: Yes, some will. And they will quickly become irrelevant as the market moves on without them.

Remember, RE market bottomed FOUR YEARS after 87. We have plenty of time to see further declines... especially since we STILL have tons of folks in denial.

http://www.streeteasy.com/nyc/sale/362004-coop-333-east-79th-street-yorkville-new-york?email=true

selling at a loss - according to write-up

Sniper,
Know exactly what you mean. If we are thinking about time frame the pricing for what sells is 2004-05. Most sellers are pricing 2006-2007 and praying for Rip Van Winkle to wake and wonder into their open house and pay cash. Allow me to assure you, the only thing missing from the recipe is time. Time for inventories to grow, time for buyers to shrink away along with the job market and economy. This is not my wish, just the forecast. The prices even of this very day will seem extraodinary once the reality of the economic climate is accepted. People will be taught this lesson buy father time. There is no rushing this lesson. The faster a market capitulates the faster things can resume normality. The problem is that no one (even buyers) is willing to face the reality. RE in this town is a dead dog for the foreseeable future. Buyers need to be patient and viglant.

And however, falcogold, NYC RE is capitulating way faster than the rest of the country. For sure, this is due to the fact that the deflation of our local bubble has coincided with unseen economic collapse at a world scale. In, say, Northern NJ, where the market started going down mid-to-late 2006, you just wouldn't see chops of 25-30% off asking prices from 6 months prior. That stage took over a year.

i have seen a lot of stuff in northern jersey that still does not seem to be 25-30% off peak. do you think it gotten there in bergen county?

Sniper! Rent!!!
You don't absolutely HAVE to buy, do you - for tax reasons? If you do, fine. But I feel like your frustration with the North Jersey sellers is only the beginning of your disappointment with the area. What if you hate everything else as well? If you feel forced into overpaying now, just think how you'd feel if you had to turn around and sell at a loss.
There must be rental options. What about the retirees? Wouldn't they enjoy a little fixed income?

Selelrs also dont have to sell. If you like your home, or have no pressure from an investment property you can sit on it for years before you can sell it at the price you want. I see posters on the board keep saying "why dont sellers get it and sell at buyers price??" the answer is simple - most owners donthave to sell and wont at a price that they dont like.

You don't need all the sellers to "get it"... just a few to make the market. Then the stats come out and sellers crap their pants.

And its already happening. Every set of quarterlies that come out, just more and more crapped pants.

Yes, sellers don't need to sell. but they're also watching money drip out the bottom.

Will they have to sell when the market is down 40%? Maybe not. But that doesn't mean the market isn't down 40%, or that the value of their place has likely declined by as much.

Tons of folks didn't HAVE to sell their tech stocks. That didn't mean they didn't get their asses kicked.

Hi, Petrfitz. Good to see you.

I think nyc10022 has a pretty strong case here. Even if only 10% of current sellers HAVE to sell, volume is so low that 10% would mean most of the transactions in the first half of 2009 might be distressed sales of one sort or another. That's astonishing. And in my neighborhood, I think the figure is well north of 10%. Open houses on the UWS these days are like something out of "The Sixth Sense". Wherever I look, I see dead people - either literally (estate sales) or figuratively (overleveraged finance workers).

Thanks W81... good color.

I also find it interesting how we've clearly moved past the "market won't decline" discussions of just a few months ago to the "ok, market is declining, but I don't have to sell/it won't affect me" types of threads. Took a little past october, but clearly sentiment has shifted.

if a high percentage of your neighbers have to sell - like 10% then you bought in a neighborhood that was rampant in speculation and buyers getting in above their heads. These neighborhoods should crash. These factors went into the statements I made on these boards about what neghborhoods will see the greatest crash. Which idiots like NYC10022 vilified me for.

There are plenty of neighborhoods like the ones I am involved in where this is not happening. As a matter of fact in all the blocks where I own, most properties have not changed hands in 20 or 30 years. This was actually one of the things that I took into account when I invested.

10% have to sell units should only be occuring on areas where there is a high portion of Wall STreet types, and speculators.

Petrfitz: I didn't say 10% of the owners have to sell. I said 10% of the SELLERS have to sell. Most of my neighbors are going about their business without any thought to selling their apartments (partly because a lot of them don't own their apartments, and a lot of others own them outright and aren't going anywhere until they die). One odd thing about my neighborhood is that residential property values could crash to 1998 levels, and there would be very little visible effect, at least in the near term.

If the Upper West Side is an unstable neighborhood where speculation is rampant, what's stable?

"Sellers also dont have to sell. If you like your home, or have no pressure from an investment property you can sit on it for years before you can sell it at the price you want." the answer is simple - most owners donthave to sell and wont at a price that they dont like."

petrfitz - i am not buying it. this isn't 3 or 4 years ago when people threw their place out onto the market, and basically said "make me move!" then got offers that they just couldn't turn down. if you have your place on the market now you have a desire to sell - for whatever reason...and every bad day on the dow or every bad jobs report or every declining comp or every rescinding of property tax rebates makes you uncomfortable. only a glutton for punish would put half their shit in storage, evacuate their home on weekends, etc., etc. to keep having a listing agent come back to them with lowball after lowball just so they can say "well we will wait until we get the price we want." fine - then get your house off the market and put it back on in 5-10 years when you WILL get that price. what's the point?

tina - yes, renting has now become my first option. that is what i have been looking at mostly. the retirees listing agent said they were "not in a position to rent" (whatever that means. i am thinking about offering them 2 years of rent up front with 75% going towards purchase if i buy at end of lease (with right of first refusal). not sure if they go for it but what do you think? around $75K up front is what i would offer.

sniper why cant you just leave your property on the market until you get the price you want? 90% of owners on the market dont have to sell regardless of how many "buyers" out there offer lowballs.

you could do that but why inconvenience yourself? i sold my apartment recently and most people who talked to me about it said "wow, this is tough time to be selling." yes, it is - and if i wasn't motivated (not forced, but motivated) to be selling i would not have bothered with putting it on the market.
i just don't see why anyone who isn't motivated to sell would put their place on in a rapidly declining market.

Also, petrfitz, I think sniper's point is that if sellers are pricing at 2006-2007 prices, with the idea that they will just leave their property on the market until they get the price they want, they may need to wait 5-10 years before that price point returns. Already, I have seen many properties that have been on the market for 2-3 years before they were taken off the market. Clearly, the sellers didn't need to sell, and if it didn't sell at the top of the bubble (2-3 years ago) then they may be waiting even longer (decades?) to get the an artificial price point they dreamed up in their head as the "price they want."

Sniper - if the retirees go for it, make sure you have a good attorney work up your rent-to-own agreement. If the retirees need that $75K now for some unknown reason (and can't put it into escrow), you want to make sure it's accounted for in two years' time. In rent-to-owns, you have to agree on an eventual sale price in advance, so you may find yourself locking on to a price you don't like anyway. The retirees have not shown themselves to be very flexible. There must be another house!

Want to move to the Hamptons? Looks like you can get some great year-round rental deals there...

the commute would kill me...unless i can borrow your helicopter.
i would only propose my deal as a right of first refusal, not a rent to own. i do not want to set a price now.
you would think there would be a lot of house but like apartments many of them are crap.

>>i sold my apartment recently and most people who talked to me about it said "wow, this is tough time to be selling."<<

Mazel tov, sniper! So the fat lady finally sang, eh? Great news!

she is still singing...board approval looms.

West 81st alluded to another phenomena that may be more prevelant on the UWS than other places due to demographics...the ultimate "must sell" of estate sales. The Greatest Generation is dying, including the original "Upper West Side" characters that gave the neighbood its distinct flavor before gentrification sipped its first white wine spritzer on Columbus Avenue in the 1970s. The parents of student radicals in the 1960s who found little to protest at home. The orginal "limosine liberals" are passing from the scene. And when that happens, apartments come up for sale based on timing that can only be controlled by someone bigger than Corcoran or Prudential or even the Dow Jones. Most of these apartments can not be rented out because they haven't been updated since the 1970s (if then) so estates are forced to sell them at whatever the market will bear unless they can or are willing to pay maintenance into who knows when. And if a building or street or area happened to house a lot of people who remembered where they were on Pearl Harbor Day, you can end up with a naturally occurring glut in the most stable of neighborhoods. Of course most of these apartments were purchased for amounts that would be considered laughable today so even a loss of 50% off peak pricing represents a signficat profit. But one should feel some sympathy for the Baby Boom sons and daughters approaching retirement age whose 401K just tanked and who always felt the safety net that "at least Mom's apartment is worth amillions."

I know several people who have put their places on the market and are very motivated to sell because they precieve the market to be falling and they want to cash out as soon as possible so they can trade up into the falling market. Not eveyone bought their place at the height of the market. Age wise, most need larger places (3-5Br)and believe this is the moment to cash out fast in order to catch that final prize. They don't have to sell, they just want to badly...they are motivated. They truly believe time is of the essence and need to price agressively to attract the limited buyer pool, 'trigger ready'. Plenty of lookers out there, not to many players.

> Which idiots like NYC10022 vilified me for.

No, perfitz... you got vilified for calling BUY and UP 15% at the TOP OF THE BIGGEST BUBBLE EVER.

You are by far the biggest moron to ever troll these boards.

NYC10022 :

1 - you just admitted that you arean idiot

2 - you still have not proven your outrigh lie from above.

why do you have to lie to feel good about yourself?

"Selelrs also dont have to sell. If you like your home, or have no pressure from an investment property you can sit on it for years before you can sell it at the price you want"

Yes, lets forget about those pesky taxes and mortgage payments... all of which are going up...

Do we call this the "ignorance school" of investing? If I don't pay attention to my losses, I didn't lose anything!

mortgage payments are going down you moron. especially if you had any debt tied to prime or the libor. again you prove your complete ignorance.

Uh, not when you just lost most of the tax deduction!

It is an honor to be called a moron by the king of all morons.

Lizyank has elegantly put her finger on a real issue. USW buildings are full of 90-somethings who bought for $30,000 and are now dying off. Their children have been relying on the millions they thought was locked up there for their retirement. The retirees and the boomer children may be the same people. The dead parents are undercutting their own children.

> why do you have to lie to feel good about yourself?

OH MY LORD! ROTFL! HYPOCRISY OF THE YEAR!

Perfitx would be so funny if he weren't so sad!

so...i guess we can change that 379 to approx. 800 points now.