"This is the Bay Area. It will always be a place where people want to live."
Inside Bay Area – Slowdown in Bay Area home sales little threat to most, experts advise
“People like me and my friends, whose property figures into their retirement plans and net worth, don’t care if there is seven months of inventory on the real estate market. We say, ‘Is the value of my property going down?’ And I don’t see that it is,” said Berkeley homeowner Robert Marsh.“Even if it goes down for several years, it will go up in the long term,” Marsh said.
Janet Fouts bought her house two years ago “and gained enough in the house not to be too worried about the changing market,” the San Jose resident said. “I think it’s just an overall adjustment, not a downhill trend. This is the Bay Area. It will always be a place where people want to live.”
Janet Fouts – you are my hero.
February 12th, 2007 at 9:03 am
Somebody replace the word “house” in that paragraph with the word “stock” and see if anybody develops a sense of deja vu.
February 12th, 2007 at 9:58 am
But look, stocks are on their way back up up up
February 12th, 2007 at 11:57 am
“But look, stocks are on their way back up up up”
EXACTLY.
February 12th, 2007 at 12:54 pm
“But look, stocks are on their way back up up up”
Riiiiiigh.
Tell that to owners of Nortal, JDSU, Cisco, Oracle, SUN, Ariba, Amazon, Yahoo, etc. who all bought at the top of 2000.
Or better yet, owners of pets.com, etoys, webvan, Excite @home, alta vista, etc, etc, ETC!
February 12th, 2007 at 3:50 pm
Seriously – stocks are going up because of the same reason real estate went up – a sudden inflow of cheap cash (read: debt) that historically has never been available. And with this cheap cash, there are so many LBO’s going on that would not be taking place in any other era. (Not surprising, a lot of companies being bought out are getting huge buyouts, and for what reason? Could it be to take out $$ from the bought out company, load it with debt, and flip them to a sucker via IPO. Wait this sounds all too familiar…)
Watch out later this year for a ton of job cuts – investors will soon ask for returns on these overpriced deals, and fastest way to get these returns is through job cuts.
So, stocks are going up my arse. Get out no later than probably mid 2007 if you want to preserve your gains the past couple years.
February 12th, 2007 at 3:54 pm
Fantastic.
February 12th, 2007 at 7:13 pm
I agree with the previous poster. I have been slowly re-allocating my portfolio for the past 8 months. Reducing my exposure to the stock market.
But as indicated, we will likely be heading for a housing bubble induced recession shortly. I would not want to be over-leveraged in more volatile asset classes right now. CDs are yielding over 5% (some as high as 5.5%). Easy money and completely secure. And considering the Fed statements regarding the need to likely raise interest rates further, interest driven assets will be good investments.
I only wish I jumped on the gold bandwagon earlier.
February 12th, 2007 at 7:16 pm
Uh oh for me.