Ground Rules

Review the Predictions 2011! thread, and if you did make a prediction, please post it here so we know how you did (please do not skip this step). Predictions provided should either be for June 30th, 2012 or December 31st, 2012, please specify.

Provide justification for your forecast, where applicable (unless you are just making it up, if so, state that).

You may provide any caveats and/or assumptions that your forecast is based on.

You need not provide a forecast for all categories below.

Where applicable, forecasts are judged against the surveys/reports listed.

Real Estate
National
Existing Home Sales – NAR
Existing Home Price – S&P Case Shiller HPI
Existing Home Price – OFHEO HPI

New Jersey
Existing Home Sales – NAR/NJAR
Existing Home Price – S&P Case Shiller HPI
Existing Home Price – OFHEO HPI

National New Home Sales – NAHB
Median New Home Price – NAHB

Commodities
Energy (Oil, NatGas)
Metals (Gold, Silver, Copper)

Equities
United States
International Developed Markets
Emerging Markets

Mortgage Financing
30-Year Fixed – Freddie Mac PMMS
15-Year Fixed – Freddie Mac PMMS

Macroeconomic
10y Treasury
Fed Funds Rate
National Unemployment Rate
New Jersey Unemployment Rate

Oddball
Anything else you’d like to make a prediction about.

For readers that have never commented, there is a link at the top of each message that is typically labeled “[#] Comments“. Go ahead and give that a click, you might be missing out on a world of information you didn’t know about. While you are there, introduce yourselves to everyone.

For new readers that have only read the messages displayed on the main page, take a look through the archives, a substantial amount of information has been put online in the past year. The archives can be accessed by using the links found in the menus on the right hand side of the page.

From the Star Ledger: N.J. braces for Hurricane Irene’s wrath as officials warn of high winds, heavy flooding and possible power outages

From the APP: Shore’s long run of missing direct hits could end this time

From the Star Ledger: Hurricane Irene could be ‘most devastating storm to ever hit’ N.J., climatologist says

From NPR: ‘Nightmare’ Scenario: Hurricane Menaces East Coast

From the Philly Inquirer: As N.J. shore braces for Irene, some wrestle urge to ride it out

From Bloomberg: New York Buildings Face Storm Damage as Property Managers Plan for Irene

From the NY Times: Alert Extends Up the East Coast as Hurricane Irene Closes In

From the ABC: NJ shore visitors flee Irene amid major evacuation

From CNN: Hurricane Irene weakens, stalks U.S. coast

Armageddonbow spotted in Northern NJ at 6pm this evening! The end of the world is surely upon us (or G-d just has a sense of humor)

This is the time and place to post observations about your local areas, comments on news stories or the New Jersey housing market, open house reports, etc. If you have any questions you wanted to ask earlier in the week but never posted them up, let’s have them. Also a good place to post suggestions, requests for information, criticism, and praise.

For readers that have never commented, there is a link at the top of each message that is typically labeled “[#] Comments“. Go ahead and give that a click, you might be missing out on a world of information you didn’t know about. While you are there, introduce yourselves to everyone.

For new readers that have only read the messages displayed on the main page, take a look through the archives, a substantial amount of information has been put online in the past year. The archives can be accessed by using the links found in the menus on the right hand side of the page.

Real estate rebound will require jobs, time

New Jersey real estate pros are reading tea leaves, searching for positive signs — anything remotely positive, really — that point to a rebound in the state’s tortured housing market.

They want to tell home buyers and sellers there is hope, so they point to trends ticking slightly upward: low mortgage rates that indicate it’s time to buy, employment rates showing signs of life, even Jersey Shore summer rentals that are ahead of last year’s pace.

But the cold, hard data of sales, inventory and foreclosures remain in free fall, leading analysts to predict that the rock bottom of the real estate crash — once widely expected to arrive late this year or the start of 2012 — now may not arrive until 2013.

“Broad-based, all indications are that prices will probably finally bottom out in 2012 or 2013,” said James W. Hughes, dean of the Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy at Rutgers University. “But then, we’re looking at a long period back.”

How long?

“Not in this decade,” Hughes said.

Much of the past week’s real estate market pessimism was spawned by a nationwide analysis by the Zillow website, which reported that home prices swooned at a rate not seen since 2008.
…
In New Jersey, the Zillow report showed, first-quarter median home prices fell 3.3 percent. During the past year, Garden State home prices have fallen a full 9 percent. That’s further and faster than our neighbors in New York (1.4 percent, 3.4 percent) and Pennsylvania (3 percent, 7.3 percent.)

Elsewhere, an Otteau Valuation Group report showed New Jersey median home prices falling twice as fast, 6.6 percent, in the first quarter of 2011.

Hughes said the first three months of 2011 represented a “double-dip,” with falling prices made to seem more steep by the artificial sales bump created by government tax incentives at the start of 2010.

For readers that have never commented, there is a link at the top of each message that is typically labeled “[#] Comments“. Go ahead and give that a click, you might be missing out on a world of information you didn’t know about. While you are there, introduce yourselves to everyone.

For new readers that have only read the messages displayed on the main page, take a look through the archives, a substantial amount of information has been put online in the past year. The archives can be accessed by using the links found in the menus on the right hand side of the page.

For readers that have never commented, there is a link at the top of each message that is typically labeled “[#] Comments“. Go ahead and give that a click, you might be missing out on a world of information you didn’t know about. While you are there, introduce yourselves to everyone.

For new readers that have only read the messages displayed on the main page, take a look through the archives, a substantial amount of information has been put online in the past year. The archives can be accessed by using the links found in the menus on the right hand side of the page.

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This is the time and place to post observations about your local areas, comments on news stories or the New Jersey housing market, open house reports, etc. If you have any questions you wanted to ask earlier in the week but never posted them up, let’s have them. Also a good place to post suggestions, requests for information, criticism, and praise.

For readers that have never commented, there is a link at the top of each message that is typically labeled “[#] Comments“. Go ahead and give that a click, you might be missing out on a world of information you didn’t know about. While you are there, introduce yourselves to everyone.

For new readers that have only read the messages displayed on the main page, take a look through the archives, a substantial amount of information has been put online in the past year. The archives can be accessed by using the links found in the menus on the right hand side of the page.

For readers that have never commented, there is a link at the top of each message that is typically labeled “[#] Comments“. Go ahead and give that a click, you might be missing out on a world of information you didn’t know about. While you are there, introduce yourselves to everyone.

For new readers that have only read the messages displayed on the main page, take a look through the archives, a substantial amount of information has been put online in the past year. The archives can be accessed by using the links found in the menus on the right hand side of the page.

She has described some homes here as “multimillion-dollar penis extensions” that will make a buyer feel as if “he has never left northern New Jersey.”

- Evelyn Konrad, In the Hamptons, Going Against the Tide

Open discussion!

Tuesday Open Discussion

You know the rules, have fun.

NJ unemployment: N.J. added 10,500 jobs in April, unemployment rate held steady

New Jersey’s economy added 10,500 jobs in April, and its unemployment rate remained stable at 9.8 percent, the state Department of Labor and Workforce Development reported Wednesday.

The report was a sign that the economy is in a recovery, albeit a choppy one. A wide range of private-sector companies accounted for the bulk of the hiring.

“Employers in New Jersey — at least some segments — have finally gained confidence in the sustainability of the recovery,” said Patrick J. O’Keefe, an economist and partner at J.H. Cohn, a Roseland-based accounting firm.
…
The New Jersey labor market was decimated during the national recession that began in 2007 and cost the state almost 230,000 jobs. But the report released Wednesday showed that hiring in April was at its strongest pace in two years.
…
The huge job gain came a month after the state lost 4,900 jobs, showing the recovery remains tenuous. But economists said it is headed in the right direction. New Jersey lost 100 private-sector jobs during the first four months of the year, compared with a loss of 71,700 private-sector jobs during the first four months of 2009, Rutgers University economist James W. Hughes said.

“At least we’re looking at a recovery now and the recession is in the rearview mirror,” Hughes said. “However, we’re still probably a long way from gangbusters.”

Sectors with the biggest gains: Professional and business services added 3,700 jobs, manufacturing added 2,500 jobs and financial activities added 1,100 jobs. The public sector added 2,400 jobs, most of which came from hiring by the U.S. Census Bureau.

Christie recommends eliminating affordable housing agency, law

Governor Christie on Thursday recommended eliminating the Council on Affordable Housing and repealing the Fair Housing Act, the agency and law that largely guided housing development across New Jersey for the past 25 years.

Describing the changes as a shift from state to local control, the Republican governor endorsed a system in which towns — rather than the state — would determine how much low- and moderate-income housing they need. The plan, which needs legislative approval, would require future projects to either include affordable housing or require developers to pay into a fund to build affordable housing elsewhere.

“This is about getting Trenton the hell out of the business of telling people how many units they’re supposed to have — some arbitrary, ridiculous formula that nobody could ever explain,” Christie said. “We need to lift that wet blanket off of the municipalities and put the people who were elected back in control of making these decisions. And I believe that they’ll approach that in a fair and responsible way after having been put upon for so long with controls — undue controls — from Trenton.”

The proposals immediately drew praise from municipal representatives, but criticism from affordable housing advocates and environmentalists. “Affordable” means monthly housing expenses eat up only 28 percent of renters’ incomes and 30 percent for homeowners, including rent, mortgage, utilities, homeowners association fees, insurance and property taxes, according to the state.

Advocates said the move would return the state to practices that occurred before the state Supreme Court’s Mount Laurel decisions, so named for the township that was sued for its zoning policy. The courts said a town’s poor residents needed a “realistic opportunity” to live in an affordable home, and towns needed to also take surrounding towns’ needs into consideration. The decisions sparked a generation of lawsuits.

“The reason the court acted the way that it did was because towns were not giving families the opportunities to have the kind of housing they could afford,” said Kevin Walsh, the associate director of Fair Share Housing Center, a nonprofit organization dedicated to defending Mount Laurel. “We’re not sure why the governor thinks that we can go backward.”