I was thinking about BoycottHousing this weekend. Personally, I’m not sure that this will be effective – after all, when you boycott buying a house, it just means someone else will. Unless everyone participates in the boycott it won’t succeed. Just look at the success (or lack thereof) of the AFA boycotts against Disney, P&G, Wells Fargo, American Airlines, Ford, Target, and others.

If folks really want to drive down housing prices, they’ll have to be proactive and inventive. Here are some ideas that I had in a quick fun brainstorming about the situation – note that most of these ideas should not be pursued:

1. Create a panic by posting lots of new ads on various sites offering homes and gradually decreasing prices every day. Obviously if you go and post 20 ads about 3br/2ba’s at $100,000 in Cupertino, that won’t be believable. Instead post one house at a “market price”, then every few days update it with a lower price and add phrases like “motivated seller” and “all offers considered”.
2. Remember Flashmobs? Why not organize a few flashmobs at some open houses. You all show up, compliment the wonderful blah blah blah, chit chat, and then start a reverse auction where everyone clamors to pay a lower price. $800,000! $760,000! $600,000! Then move on to the next house.
3. Add more For Sale signs to your neighborhood. Imagine if every house on a street had a For Sale sign. “Motivated Seller”. That probably wouldn’t help property prices. (Please don’t do this. You’re probably going to be trespassing or littering.)
4. Hire a spinner – you know, the guys holding those giant signs at the corner? Perhaps the sign would say “Distressed Properties ->”.
5. Write your congressman/senator and ask them to tighten lending standards so that not everyone and their dog can get a mortgage.

Yeah, a lot of these really do require work – expensive, risky, and/or illegal. So you shouldn’t do any of these. Perhaps just waiting might work!

Do you have any ideas for lowering real estate prices?

Edit: Changed one idea