When to short 2013

[Vanraw]

Where do you guys think the top will be? 14000? 14500? 15000?

I keep tickling the TZA button. The market seems to be flat waiting on sequester, but in general, earnings were nothing outstanding. Over all Russel2k has beat the market as well.

My guess right now is that some time this year we will come close to 15k, but that that is the high.

[Grieve]

It does seem like there will be a pullback, maybe 5-10%, after this big start to the year. Maybe it's already start - today was a rough day. But I'm a little scared to short it at this point.

I do think any pullback will be temporary, and we'll be higher (maybe a lot higher) later in the year.

[Vanraw]

Do you see the Dow getting much over 15k?

[Grieve]

Well now the fed are getting wishy-washy about when easing will end, maybe not. If there is no deal on sequestration, that is going to put a big dampener on the market (and economy) as well.

But if the economy continues to improve, yeah, definitely can see 15k this year. And maybe a lot higher in the next couple years. Housing and banks will light the way...

[Breand]

Well I'm guessing since I sold half of my mutual fund assets on Thursday to prepare for my home purchase in June, I have a bearish view on the next few months. I didn't want to take a chance on a downturn when we are near all time highs right now so I pulled the trigger. In other news, I am buying a new house in June

[Vanraw]

Good investment Breand. Hope you got a good deal on what ever you bought. Mortgage wise, its not going to get any lower.

[Grieve]

Yeah, great time to buy a house, and probably best time to sell your mutual funds too. Market is getting a little frothy. Except for Apple... :roll:

[Breand]

Good investment Breand. Hope you got a good deal on what ever you bought. Mortgage wise, its not going to get any lower.

I hope so! We got 25k below asking but I still feel we are overpaying a bit. But it's totally updated and has a beautiful in ground pool with waterfall and paver stones everywhere. And is one of the top school districts on Long Island (and the country). I really see this as a dream house I will live in until I retire and the investment part is secondary. I'll PM you guys the link if you're interested.

[OrsunVZ]

Yeah I am in the same boat as you atm Bre... housing here in S. Fla has increased 20% over this time last year. A lot of that is due to how depressed the market was, and it is part of an adjustment. But there are already people starting to scream "bubble" down here... friggin' crazy eh?

Never listen to your realtors either though - for them, there is never a bad time to sell your house, and never a bad time to buy. I recently read an internal email at Keyes Realty that I was accidentaly copied on, where it is now a good time to sell your house, but it is also a good time to buy, because "you snooze you lose". You can't have both - it can only be neutral at best. I still think it is largely a buyer's market at the moment. I don't think we've quite corrected the under valued properties down here just yet (certainly not in single family homes. We might be there for condos though).

Where are you looking in Bre? (and when did you say you were headed down here again?)

[Grieve]

I was just reading an article on CNBC that was saying how the inventory of houses for sale is WAY down, and it's becoming a seller's market again. Realtors are getting a huge number of offers for good houses.

http://www.cnbc.com/id/100512238/Home_Bu...the_Houses

[Vanraw]

I was just reading an article on CNBC that was saying how the inventory of houses for sale is WAY down, and it's becoming a seller's market again. Realtors are getting a huge number of offers for good houses.

http://www.cnbc.com/id/100512238/Home_Bu...the_Houses

That is probably the cash that people are freeing up now that there are signs of recovery in housing. The old adage "Buy the rumor sell the news". Buying right now is depends on how bad it got. In Iowa we really didn't see a major collapse, but we have never had the massive million dollar 3 bedroom ranch pricing like in California.

Over all I think its a safe bet to buy now. Only 2 things can change the market. Another economic crash, or congress removing the interest and tax deduction.

[Breand]

Yeah Orsun my wife's cousin rents in Key Biscayne and he is saying the prices are shooting up again. Im sure he is happy though as his mom's giant waterfront condo in Coconut Grove will be a nice nest egg. mSorry I was down there a couple weeks ago but we were only in for 3 days and it would have been impossible for me to meet up.

We live on Long Island in NY. Moving from town of Bethpage to E. Northport but Commack school district which is ranked like 18th (and 3rd on Long Island) in the state on U.s world and news report.

[Breand]

And yes there definitely seems to be very little on the market. There was little for us to choose from in our price range. I get the sense people are waiting on a full housing recovery so their homes will sell for more which is really short sighted as any upgrade they buy will have increased by the same percentage and they will lose out anyway.

[Grieve]

They may also be waiting to no longer be underwater. You need to have a little bit of equity in your current house, so you can sell it and still have something left for a downpayment on the next one.

A lot of people went from owning to renting over the last few years, and I think those renters are now looking to buy again. Which they should, since the government basically pays you to own (can deduct interest payments from taxes but not rent).

[Breand]

...and today I get the news that the people buying our house are walking away...hooray! =(

[Grieve]

Doh, that sucks. Hopefully someone else will jump in to replace them.

[Vanraw]

That does suck. Did you get any deposit cash?

[Breand]

That does suck. Did you get any deposit cash?

Nah it was way early in the process, before we went to contract. Basically we accepted their offer, and then they showed up the next day with a dad in tow and he spent an hour there doing his own personal home inspection which really began to piss me off but I kept my mouth shut because their bid was a lot higher than we thought we'd get. Two days later they dropped out.

I have another offer on the table but it is very low.

[Grieve]

Selling a house can be really stressful. We had a firm offer for the first house I owned, and then they came back with a whole list of really stupid shit they wanted us to fix. It almost fell through because there was one thing in particular that was trivial on paper, but really hard (and expensive) to fix. I'm hoping not to have sell the current house for a long long time...

[OrsunVZ]

When I was selling my house, we had our little incident with my son nearly drowning (well technically I guess he did drown), while we were sitting with him as he was recovering we got a call that our buyer had walked, that was Saturday, by the following Tuesday, we had a new buyer lined up - you'll find someone else Bre.

I am by no means an expert, but I have a hard time putting too much weight behind some of these statistics. There are a couple of things that I am aware of that I *think* would heavily affect inventory numbers at the moment.

Firstly, very few people buy homes over the Dec/Jan time frame, and then there is a big push that coincides with school schedules (nobody wants to move in the middle of a school year if they can help it). This translates to people not putting homes up because if you know it has a better chance to sell at full value during a seasonal flux, then as a seller you don't put it up early. The longer it sits on the market, the more a buyer wonders what is wrong with this, and statistically, houses that stay on the market longer than average tend to sell lower compared to their appraised value than houses that sell quickly.

Secondly, and this one is probably the biggest impact, is that short sale tax forgiveness was expiring at the end of last year. Short sales typically take around 6 months to complete. This means that 1/2 way through last year, everyone upside down in their homes had to make a decision. 1) walk away, 2) try to sneak the short sale in before the end of the year, and 3) hold off to see what the legislators would do. Most people considering short sales would opt for #3. So from about mid way through the year last year, new short sales drastically declined. It wasn't until midway through January that they announced it would be extended. Low and behold, as I am hunting for houses, new short sales are starting to come on line. Considering short sales and foreclosures count for 40% of all sales here in S. Fla last year, with 1/2 the year with increasingly less SS's, it stands to reason that we should start seeing those options come back. how quickly could significantly impact housing prices, and slow what we are seeing.

This 2nd reason also impacts the average sale price as well, and would definitely have an impact on what the sales TRENDS would show. Not a single realtor anywhere draws these conclusions that I've found, so either I'm way off base with my thinking here, or I am right about these guys.

Lastly, the banks are still sitting on HUGE inventories they haven't even released yet of foreclosed properties, how long they will sit with this stuff, I have no clue. But it stands to reason that they might try to wait for a housing rally like this before trying to of load the inventory.

[Breand]

Firstly, very few people buy homes over the Dec/Jan time frame, and then there is a big push that coincides with school schedules (nobody wants to move in the middle of a school year if they can help it). This translates to people not putting homes up because if you know it has a better chance to sell at full value during a seasonal flux, then as a seller you don't put it up early. The longer it sits on the market, the more a buyer wonders what is wrong with this, and statistically, houses that stay on the market longer than average tend to sell lower compared to their appraised value than houses that sell quickly.

This was our biggest problem. We basically decided to sell late in the season last year and put the house up in July. Then it got to October with no buyer and we didn't want to break up my son's school year so we put a June 2013 closing on the listing. Now it's March and the house has been on the market for like 250 days and it looks bad.

The only positive thing I can look at it is that the cheaper houses in our area, which mine is, are getting gobbled up quickly (I think we have a lot of Hurricane Sandy people not rebuilding their homes and buying inland) and I really feel like our house is the best of the bunch currently listed in our town. We have a re-show today, hopefully it works out. It's just scary because even if we get an offer, the inspection process will freak me out. There's definitely problems with our house. Old wiring, leaky screen house, the burner is ancient. I just never saw this house as anything other than a starter home so I didn't want to dump money into it.

[OrsunVZ]

Put in an offer on a house over the weekend. It came on the market on Friday, well below its value - we immediately made an appt to go and see it. Earliest we could get was on Sunday. We got there, and there were easily 20 cars parked around it with other prospective buyers. We went in with what I felt was a pretty aggressive bid, so hopefully we'll get lucky. We could still lose it though, because our bid was still below what I feel it could currently sell for.

The interesting part is that I haven't seen this strategy from a selling standpoint before. Instead of listing the house for value, list it well below and drum up the excitement in order to get the bidding war started. Late Sunday night all bids got a message stating several bids were received, please place your best revised offer by 5pm Monday (today). Even if I don't get the house I am very interested to see how this all pans out, and how high the winning bid actually goes.

Incidentally, the House went on the market at 249, I went in at 261, and then revised to 263. I believe the house should have been listed for 300 to sell at 280 (or get lucky to sell at a full 300). Anyway, I just thought is was a different and possibly better way to get to a price that the seller wanted. In most circumstances you are listing higher than want you will sell for simply because you know you will get negotiated down. To that end, by listing high, you may alienate prospective buyers. By listing it low, you have the ability (at least in a high demand market) to push the bidding war.

Sorry for hijacking the thread btw...

[Breand]

not hijacking, we always go off on tangents here. This is really more of a financial advice section that stocks/investments.

That strategy I'm sure is a good one in a good market, but NYC environs are not recovering like the rest of the country. I don't think I would get enough interest for a bidding war. Miami seems to be really cooking now, almost wish I had enough to buy a home down there after the crash that I could have rented out and then retired in.

We did get another offer today. Much lower than what the people with the accepted offer had, but it's a decent starting point.

[OrsunVZ]

yeah I imagine the environment needs to be right. Glad to hear about the offer though.

[Grieve]

Now that we've thoroughly turned this into a housing thread... Do you guys put much stock in Zillow when buying/selling? I paid quite a bit of attention to it when we were looking for our current house, but I'm getting a bit suspicious of it now - the zestimate for our house is a good $150k higher than I would expect it to be, and higher than bigger houses in our neighboorhood... I wonder if people (or more likely real estate agents) have figured out how to "game" it to make their houses looking more appealing?