The Real Estate Deal

Editor Cindy Zetts dishes on real-estate and development around Puget Sound: She lived in apartments, townhomes and houses -- a dozen of them in four states -- before settling in the Seattle area in 1997. After taking a bath on the sale of her first home, in South Florida, she vowed to wise up about real estate. She bought a house in Covington 10 years ago because, well, she could afford one there.

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July 24, 2008 8:26 AM

Real-estate outlook: Not many bulls here

Posted by Cindy Zetts

SAN FRANCISCO -- Here at Inman News' 12th annual Real Estate Connect conference, participants and panelists are talking about when the housing crisis might end. Opinions vary, as you might expect, but the bulls are few and far between.

Even a Wednesday afternoon panel discussion of where we are in the housing cycle -- "The Housing Debate: Bull vs. Bear" -- the six-member panel wasn't evenly divided. Four were definite bears (negative), one sort-of bear and one bull (positive) -- Dottie Herman, president and CEO of Prudential Douglas Elliman Real Estate in New York -- who said the real-estate market isn't horrible, that the news media needs to examine the neighborhoods.

Again with the media. Good grief.

Anyway, one of the bears -- John Williams, an economist with Shadowstats.com -- said we will end up in a recession (remember, we're not officially there yet), and it will be the worst recession since the Great Depression of the 1930s.

Yves Smith, of NakedCapitalism.com, said we're about halfway through this market decline and could see prices falling 35 percent, which would bring home values more in line with rental rates, an indicator that the market is stabilizing.

Other bear comments from the panel:

-- Prices will continue to fall until they reach market-clearing level -- in other words, they're low enough to bring in enough buyers to drastically reduce the supply of for-sale homes.

-- The recovery will not be V-shaped. We will teeter along the bottom for a while because we have a crisis of confidence (people are afraid to commit to buying). Homeowners tend to follow prices down instead of cutting to the chase and lowering prices enough to clear the market.

-- We'll bump along the bottom of this trough into 2009 and possibly 2010.

There were a couple of bull comments (a couple from the panel's bears):

-- There will be tremendous opportunities in real estate.

-- Buying real estate in the right area while prices are down and holding on to it is a good strategy.

-- 2009 will be better for home building after bottoming out this year.

There you have it: There's no consensus, but the experts are definitely more bearish than bullish.

Now, don't shoot the messenger. I didn't tell them what to say; I'm just telling you what they're saying. See the difference?

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