April 10, 2007
Buying a house? You're just throwing money away!
.. or so says the NYT, in a splendid deconstruction of real-estate agent hype about house-buying as a "no-lose investment."
Note the positive-feedback loop; as house prices level off or dip, people who could only convince themselves that the house they wanted was affordable by assuming steadily rising prices discover that they can't, in fact, afford to own it. That realization (along, of course, with the meltdown in other-than-prime mortgage availability) ought to drive down prices further, at least out here in HousingBubbleLand.
Footnote A person who sells houses for a living is a real estate agent, or real estate broker. "Realtor" is a made-up word, and a registered trademark of the real estate cartel, which does an excellent job at preventing the falling transactions costs enabled by improving computer and communications technology from being available to home-sellers. Why do reporters insist on using that silly label? Is the guy who sells bedroom sets a Furnitor?
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