Comments on: Philly Fed: New Jersey “outlook has dimmed”

By: ben

ben — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 15:42:19 +0000

central banks can’t devalue gold. It requires creating it out of thin air. Sure, they can flood the markets with their reserves to knock the price down, which they’ve been doing, but those are finite. Dollars and Euros are infinite. They’ve done such a poor job trying to suppress the price of gold. It’s up 300%. You’ll know when it’s time to get rid of your gold. When every yahoo on the corner is talking about owning gold, I would say sell.

By: njpatient

njpatient — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 04:17:15 +0000

remind me tomorrow to tell you Mrs. Patient’s funny story about how completely facked the NJ RE market is.

By: NJGator

NJGator — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 04:05:33 +0000

Sorry I am late to the Montclair discussion, but I wanted to throw something out there. back in 2005, the underprice, multiple bids over asking game played for almost any property in town – even total dumps. Today if you want to play that game, your home better be in pristine, move in condition and you’ve probably staged it. Some things may still be going for ‘over asking’m but that doesn’t mean that the market has not significantly slowed here.

BTW the house across the street from us that is a total fixer uppper is listed for $120k below assessed price has not moved in over a month. It needs work, but 2-3 yrs ago there would have been a bidding war due to it’s 1 block from midtown direct location. It’s definitely not 2005 in Montclair kids.

By: njpatient

njpatient — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 03:48:30 +0000

336 frank

“Show my a house in NJ, outside of Newark that sold for 50% below prior sale.”

Why don’t you tell me?
You said your buddies were buying at 50 cents on the dollar and selling at 80.
You were lying?

By: njrebear

njrebear — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 02:49:29 +0000

Upset homeowner shoots real estate agent in Mich.

http://www.cnbc.com/id/25484232/for/cnbc

By: skep-tic

skep-tic — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 02:48:52 +0000

Ben– good points all around. I guess I just don’t understand how you know when gold is better to hold than dollars, euros, etc. It seems to me it would be fairly easy for a central bank to demolish the value of your gold (which you will ultimately have to sell for some kind of real currency). I understand the overall point of inflation being bad, and I can see how owning gold can protect against this somewhat, I just am not convinced that gold is quite the panacea you’re making it out to be (or maybe I am missing your point).

By: Ben

Ben — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 02:33:45 +0000

skeptic, of course gold is a poor investment. It’s money. It doesn’t pay anything. If you were looking to invest your gold, you would loan out your money to the bank or someone else for a fixed interest rate. However, in this type of environment, gold is a much better bet than investing in American Stocks or sticking your money in a CD. People who have CD’s are getting killed right now. In a bull market with strong currency, the market will easily outperform gold. When central banks are trying to prop up their economy via inflation, gold easily outperforms those markets. Gold, oil, commodities, and foreign stocks have outperformed the Dow and the Nasdaq incredibly in the past 8 years and will continue to do so. I’m not going to hold onto my gold/silver forever. There will be a time to sell and a time to get back into US stocks. As for now, they are in for a huge beating.

By: Hobokenite

Hobokenite — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 02:07:29 +0000

Frank,

Just as a thought experiment, consider what would happen if you listed a house for sale for $100.

By: lostinny

lostinny — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 02:04:47 +0000

337
Grim Piggybacking on your post. I know there’s a lot of talk here about newer agents with no experience and how they handle sales. What do you all think is the percentage of agents that have been in the game a long time but still won’t come to reality in terms of pricing?

By: Pat

Pat — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 02:04:06 +0000

grim, you know, I’ve always been way on your side, but you’re even starting to piss me off.

;)

By: grim

grim — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 01:53:23 +0000

Man, I never get tired of dropping the lowball. Watching that agent walk out of the office muttering “waste of time” was priceless.

By: frank

frank — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 01:36:07 +0000

#321,
“a house can be sold above asking and yet 50% below it’s previous sale price.”

Show my a house in NJ, outside of Newark that sold for 50% below prior sale.

By: skep-tic

skep-tic — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 01:17:28 +0000

#329

“Gold didn’t have any price gains for 20 years because the currency was strong and we had a productive economy. A lot of things were cheap in that time period. Food, oil. You track the price of those things, they went hand in hand with gold and still do. Btw, gold was 35 bucks an ounce 40 years ago. It’s approaching 1000 now. Seems like a pretty damn good store of wealth to me. I have a 5 dollar gold piece from 1905. It’s now worth about 330. Gold is gold, it buys you the same amount of stuff it always has. Dollars and Euros? Not so much.”

OK, I understand what you are saying, but you are selectively picking your entry and exit points. It is not as though the value of gold has remained constant through eternity. In fact, if you look at the history of gold prices, it has proven to be a very poor investment over the long term, especially for those who buy it after a massive run up like we have seen recently.

By: BC Bob

BC Bob — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 00:42:34 +0000

“not saying gold hasn’t been a winner recently, but it has also had big runups previously and then collapsed and gone nowhere for 20+ years as well. so I’m not sure how it can be portrayed fairly as this super-secure store of wealth.”

skep,

I am not a gold bug, just very bullish at this time.

How the market performed 20 years ago is inconsequential. I was selling gold calls in the 90′s and was bullish/long RE. In addition to this, I was traveling overseas, in the late 80′s and the dollar was Numero Uno. Our fiscal/monetary policy was supportive of king dollar at that time.

No need to go into the fed’s actions from 2001. Presently, when concrete/structural changes are implemented, supportive of the dollar, I will rotate out of intangibles and back to paper. That said, the fed’s choice is to inflate or manufacture apple carts. I’m not fighting the fed, I am only following their direction.

By: BC Bob

BC Bob — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 00:27:35 +0000

“20% drop in VOLUME is not as important as price.”

NNJ,

Would you say it’s a precursor to higher prices, in the headwinds of rising inventory, rising inflation, lower real incomes and tightening credit?