Wikipedia

[Gohabsgo_IHB]

There's a lot of excellent information on Wikipedia. It's a long read, but it tells a lot about the real estate market. You should all check it out.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_housing_bubble#_note-RGE_tramp_stamp

Timeline, Causes (Home ownership mania, interest rates, lending standards), Bubble Burst, Subprime, Alt-A, MBS repurchase, HPI, S&P/Case-Shiller Index, Government Bailout.

Here are a few good cahrts from there.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:EconomistHomePrices20050615.jpg

 

[movingaround_IHB]

Am I reading these little charts right - did Los Angeles go down more during the late 90's than these other cities did? And Miami and Boston have actually seen larger increases than LA??

 

[Gohabsgo_IHB]

S&P/Case-Shiller data can be found here: http://www2.standardandpoors.com/portal/site/sp/en/us/page.topic/indices_csmahp/2,3,4,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0.html

Be careful, this is not annual % down, but cumulative.

LA price increase by 18.5% from 1987 to 1990, which caused a bigger early-90 bubble than other markets.

LA increased by 69% from Jan-87 to June-90 (16.2% annual increase) (prior Peak), then it went down by 27.1% from June-90 to March-96 (5.3% annual decrease). The new bubble started then increasing by 274.5% to September-06 (13.3% annual increase) . The market is 5.8% down since then. Some periods had annual trends as high as 37.9% (Feb-04 to Jun-04) and as low as -11.9% (Sep-92 to Mar- 93).

Miami and Boston increased more since 1990 because they didn't experience such a big drop in early-90.

 

[graphrix_IHB]

You can find a lot of info on Shiller's MacroMarkets website. You can also sign up to get emails when the new data comes out. I also highly recommend reading his papers in the publications section. Especially "A Decade of Boom and Bust in Single Family Home Prices: Boston and Los Angeles, 1983-1993". This really puts the psychology into perspective of how it isn't different this time.

 

[lawyerliz_IHB]

I don't remember any decrease in Miami in 1990. Miami started much lower price-wise. Much, much lower.

And in spite of our abysmal salaries, there is a lot of under-the-table money in Miami. And no, mostly not from drugs.

Miami Cubans, having lost everything once (or having parents who lost everything), are far less risk adverse than the rest of us. They know what it feels like and can imagine pulling themselves up by their bootstraps one more time.