You would think that with all the surefire bets in housing that people would be dialing up their realtors and heading out every weekend to make those lustful multiple offers presented in PowerPoint format on properties. Yet the overall market data shows a different story. The house horniest of them all, investors, are clearly pulling out of markets including sunny and inflated California. Apparently home prices do matter when making investment decisions. Cash strapped hormonal buyers will keep on buying but housing prices are set on the margin. That margin is becoming razor thin on current volume. I find it interesting that the biggest housing supporter of them all, the National Association of Realtors is also somewhat tepid on this recovery. Why? Because home sales volume is pathetic. Keep in mind they make money on selling and buying. Volume is key. Their model doesn’t work so well with banks holding onto properties like Gollum holding onto the ring and the foreclosure process being dragged out like the forever college student enjoying year 10 at Santa Monica City College. You see this overarching trend occurring in many metro areas across the country. Investors have been propping up the market since 2008. They are now slowly pulling back. You are also starting to see a convergence of analysts putting out their predictions on how overvalued housing is and backing it up with mountains of data. The other side of the argument points to prices. Sure, they’ve gone up but value is created by actual price and that is sort of the point. The answer as always isn’t so simple but using your thinking cap it is important to understand that housing is not a “no brainer†decision in this market.
People adapt very quickly to new circumstances. Today, many are coming to terms that the housing market is dominated by investors. Existing home sales are running at a pathetic pace now that investors are slowly stepping away from the single family home punchbowl. Purchase applications came in at their lowest level since December of 2000. The only difference is that we’ve gone from a population of 281 million to 317 million today. Where is all that pent up demand? A large part of it has moved back home and is too broke even to rent. Home prices went up in 2013 because of Wall Street’s insatiable sudden infatuation with single family homes. It also went up because a cocktail of accounting chicanery, banking trickery, and artificially low rates allowed the foreclosure process to transform into a sideshow. Even though 7,000,000 Americans have had a taste of foreclosure, you still have many benefitting from this delay by squatting or simply dragging out the foreclosure process. The game has worked well for these two groups. Some rationalize that if they buy today, the future will look very similar to the past and maybe they too can benefit from moral hazard. Yet where do we go from here? Purchase applications are a big reflection of what is happening on a larger scale. Lower paying jobs, less long-term employment, and a cash strapped younger class of buyers. Cash buyers still make up a large part of the market today but this group is slowly pulling back.
House horny Californians try to avoid the overarching statistics starring them directly in the face. Many Californians are all hat and no cattle. We already know that many Millenials are moving back home with mom and dad because they simply cannot afford to rent or buy a home in the golden state. The golden sarcophagus with nice granite countertops is getting a little more crowded for baby boomers. A recent analysis actually found that many baby boomers as well had to move back in with mom and dad. No, they are not trying to save for a down payment or take care of mom and dad. The vast majority are moving in because of economic hardship. So much for the theory of pent up demand. The buyers of the last few years came from Wall Street, cash investors, foreign buyers, and house lusting people leveraging every penny they have to buy a home. So it is no surprise that more than 2 million adults are now living back home in the rooms they once occupied as teenagers. I actually dug up Census data and highlight why the flood of buyers is not materializing. This also points to more locked up housing units as boomers move in with those from the silent generation. Just more evidence highlighting the transformation of California into a feudal state and largely a rental focused market.
When it comes to real estate, we know that Californians enjoy drinking from the gold cup of mania. Lusting over real estate seems to be as common as traffic on the 405. People in California have a deep rooted cultural and economic amnesia. I bet half the population has very little idea regarding the history of many cities in Southern California. Heck, most don’t even know where their drinking water comes from. So trying to discuss Fed policy, skewing based on investors, or market manipulation with a large portion of people is like talking to your dog about Hemmingway. Some people only understand “real estate goes up!†and when it doesn’t, they only understand “buying is bad!†California real estate is overvalued by most economic measures. Sure, people are willing to pay insane prices but they did this as well in 2006 and 2007 and people also paid crazy prices for tech companies in a previous delusion based boom. Investors are pulling back because they simply don’t perceive value at current prices. We are now seeing more reports putting a price on how overvalued the region is. Fitch Ratings and Trulia both point to SoCal as being massively overpriced. In fact, Fitch Ratings has Orange County overvalued by a whopping 30 percent. Congratulations to Orange County for being the most overpriced county in the entire United States.
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