It’s all bad news this week on the real estate front. Now that numbers for July are in ( post $8,000 tax credit) the monster has reared it’s ugly head. For those of you who haven’t heard, think 25.5% down, exceeding even the grimmest predictions. NYTimes reports that home values have declined in some areas by as much as 30%, heralding a decline the likes of which we haven’t been seen since 1999.
It seems the parade is over, analysts of every ilk are claiming housing as a money making market is over. People will only buy houses to “live in” not to “make money”. We’ve chosen a simplistic and optimistic view. When the broad economy recovers, the housing market will recover. If there’s anything that the market has taught us it’s that it’s cyclical. Maybe it will never cycle back to where it once was, but this gloom and doom prediction is just unreasonable. Buyers are few — sure, that makes sense in a tough economy, people tend to be skittish, hoarding their cash under the bed. But the benefits of buying a house are still apparent and as far as I know they were never called into question. It’s so deeply ingrained in the American psyche that to say people won’t buy houses again is practically tantamount to saying they’ll never have kids again, and THAT market is suddenly dried up, because let’s face it we haven’t had reproduction numbers this low since the Ice Age. I’ll take my chances.
The Queen Bee. She rules over the Flatbush Riviera. All of Downtown Brooklyn and Fort Greene is her domain. 
