From the Citizens’ Voice:
As housing goes, so goes economy
When housing prices were going through the roof and people were making huge profits selling their homes at high prices, some observers worried that there was a housing “bubble.”
Now, with the housing market in decline, we won’t say that a bubble has burst, but we will say some of the air is escaping from the balloon.
Because of a decline in the housing market, economic growth slowed to a 2 percent pace in the July to September quarter. Worse, the outlook is for a continued slowdown in the beginning of 2007.
“The housing market is profoundly weak,” said Ken Mayland, president of Clearview Economics. “The economic slowdown really took hold in the third quarter, and, I think, it is going to basically continue through the first half of next year.”
This underscores an important fact about the economy. It can be temporarily bolstered by an irrational buying trend, but eventually it returns to reality. 2007 appears to be headed for a reality check.
From Newsday:
A year of for-sale signs
It could have been worse but Long Island’s economy could have been better, too, in the year just ending.
After years of inflating, the Island’s housing bubble sprang a noisy leak; prices for homes, the largest investments for many Long Islanders, fell in Nassau and rose barely at all in Suffolk. Sensing the crest, more homeowners put their houses up for sale so that inventory backed up and there seemed hardly to be a street anywhere without for-sale signs.
The hissing leak reduced homeowners’ ability to borrow on equity and might have diminished their willingness in general to spend money. But economist Pearl Kamer of the Long Island Association, a business group, says the summer’s $3-a-gallon-plus gasoline did a lot more damage to consumer confidence – evidenced by sales tax revenues, a barometer of consumer sentiment.
As gasoline prices peaked in July, sales tax revenues fell off; when prices fell in the fall, tax revenues recovered. “People who had to pay higher gasoline prices cut back on all their other discretionary expenditures,” she said.
http://www.paperdinero.com/BNN.aspx?id=78
>housing bubble video
How quickly they forget. There was a nice bounce in the NASDAQ six months after the peak, but how long did it take for it to really deflate? Stocks are much more liquid than real estate, I expect it to take 5 years to sort this one out….
http://bigcharts.marketwatch.com/quickchart/quickchart.asp?symb=nasdaq&sid=3291&o_symb=nasdaq&freq=2&time=13
New Jersey – Real Estate – FSBO
It seems like more and more home owners are flocking to free real estate sites to market for sale by owner listings. Web sites like NJville.com and craigslist allow the homeowners to get better results marketing themselves than if they went with a realtor or paid for a listing on other NJ real estate sites. These types of site are free to use and seem to be a growing trend. hmmm…
nj real estate,new jersey real estate, NJ fsbo,new jersey fsbo,njville.com,craigslist.com