Dude, Where's My Recession?
If we're in a full-blown recession, where are the bargains from desperate businesses and individuals?
M and I have been considering buying a vacation home, or a snowbird home, or moving back up north for a couple of years now, and I'm not seeing housing prices drop the way you'd think they should so far. Maybe I'm not looking in the right places, but prices are not what I'd consider to be affordable, really. Maybe I just have too long a memory. When M and I first moved to town, there were nice little starter homes all over the valley for $30-40K. When we bought our second home, we sold our starter home for about $70K. I'm just not seeing much in the $125-$175K range that looks decent. Some of you folks in other areas of the country may laugh at these prices, but if you look at median household income around the US, and use the standard multipliers that banks always used to use as guidelines to whether someone could afford a home, that's about where things should be.
Also, I keep hearing about all the desperate car dealers, but looking at the ads in the paper, I haven't seen new car prices drop very much. They've added some incentives, such as the payment protection plans, and longer warrantees, and occasionally zero percent financing (if you qualify, which I'm guessing they're making darned tough), but I'm not seeing deep discounts yet.
I also watch craigslist fairly faithfully, and I'd have thought we'd be seeing a huge number of "toys" out there that people can't make the payments on, for cheap. Not really happening.
Maybe I'm just not looking hard enough.
M and I have been considering buying a vacation home, or a snowbird home, or moving back up north for a couple of years now, and I'm not seeing housing prices drop the way you'd think they should so far. Maybe I'm not looking in the right places, but prices are not what I'd consider to be affordable, really. Maybe I just have too long a memory. When M and I first moved to town, there were nice little starter homes all over the valley for $30-40K. When we bought our second home, we sold our starter home for about $70K. I'm just not seeing much in the $125-$175K range that looks decent. Some of you folks in other areas of the country may laugh at these prices, but if you look at median household income around the US, and use the standard multipliers that banks always used to use as guidelines to whether someone could afford a home, that's about where things should be.
Also, I keep hearing about all the desperate car dealers, but looking at the ads in the paper, I haven't seen new car prices drop very much. They've added some incentives, such as the payment protection plans, and longer warrantees, and occasionally zero percent financing (if you qualify, which I'm guessing they're making darned tough), but I'm not seeing deep discounts yet.
I also watch craigslist fairly faithfully, and I'd have thought we'd be seeing a huge number of "toys" out there that people can't make the payments on, for cheap. Not really happening.
Maybe I'm just not looking hard enough.