“U.S. existing home sales will reach a bottom in 2008”

[cthulu2016]

This is a sad, but funny piece about the fact that experts have been announcing the bottom in the housing market continually for six straight years. The compendium of quotes, arranged chronologically, reinforces the sense that being wrong is not, and never has been, any barrier to being a professional prognosticator.

A few from the (very long) list:

(Bloomberg, October 6, 2006) Greenspan Says `Worst’ May Be Past in U.S. Housing

(Forbes, May 25, 2007) “The housing market is about to hit bottom.”

(Bloomberg, January 14, 2008) “U.S. existing home sales will reach a bottom in 2008”

(The Truth About Mortage, February 9, 2009) "Home Price Bottom Predicted by Year End"

(USA Today, March 1, 2010) Warren Buffett sees housing market bouncing back by 2011

(Reuters, January 28, 2011) U.S. housing bottom seen in mid-2011

(Forbes, January 10, 2012) Has The Housing Market Hit Its Bottom?

(TIME May 15, 2012) A new analysis suggests that home prices will begin to rise later this year.

(Business Insider, May 29, 2012) The Housing Bottom Is Here

______________________

Yeah! The Housing Bottom Is Here! (PWBC™)

http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2012/05/the-housing-bottom-is-here/

[dkf]

1. They didn't want to create a self fulfilling prophecy.

If you tell people housing is still coming down then it definitely will because no one wants to buy if the value is falling.

It's all sentiment.

[Odin2005]

4. The "confidence faeries".

[BOG PERSON]

5. "animal spirits"

[jtuck004]

2. Good sources still say it every year, as some continue down. More like a mantra now. n/t

[Robb]

3. Sort of like "War with Iran imminent."

Or perhaps, more saliently, my 3-year-old being told we're out of blueberries. "No! Yes! Yes! We have blueberries! We do!"

[Egalitarian Thug]

6. This is called "Ginning up" the market. If you look back at the collapse you'll

see the whole thing goes back to the great real estate Ponzi scheme. The people in charge cannot under any circumstances allow house prices to fall to market value. The entire scheme to prop up the ruling class is utterly dependent on keeping the artificially inflated market inflated. If real estate fell to actual values the entire economy would collapse and take the rest of the world down with us.

So just like the consumer economy model, perception is the key. Reality is irrelevant. So, the stock market is always up, turning the corner, or making a necessary correction, the economy is always in some stage of recovery, and above all, that all you have to do is work hard and keep giving your money to the Masters of the Universe. Don't worry about that other guy, he's just a loser and you'll come out of this just fine.

[BOG PERSON]

7. To describe the spectacle,

its formation, its functions and the forces which tend to dissolve it, one must artificially distinguish certain inseparable elements. When analyzing the spectacle one speaks, to some extent, the language of the spectacular itself in the sense that one moves through the methodological terrain of the very society which expresses itself in the spectacle. But the spectacle is nothing other than the sense of the total practice of a social-economic formation, its use of time. It is the historical movement in which we are caught.

The spectacle presents itself as something enormously positive, indisputable and inaccessible. It says nothing more than “that which appears is good, that which is good appears. The attitude which it demands in principle is passive acceptance which in fact it already obtained by its manner of appearing without reply, by its monopoly of appearance.

The basically tautological character of the spectacle flows from the simple fact that its means are simultaneously its ends. It is the sun which never sets over the empire of modern passivity. It covers the entire surface of the world and bathes endlessly in its own glory.

The society which rests on modern industry is not accidentally or superficially spectacular, it is fundamentally spectaclist. In the spectacle, which is the image of the ruling economy, the goal is nothing, development everything. The spectacle aims at nothing other than itself.

http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/debord/society.htm

[cthulu2016]

8. quite a passage

[cthulu2016]

10. ...

[Cronkite]

9. When median house prices hit 2.5X median household income.....

You gotta love the use of "a bottom" as if they will "bounce back". Housing prices were extremely overvalued and anyone that hopes they will return to bubble levels is smoking crack.

Historically median household value has been 2.5X median household income. There is no rational reason to expect it to be any different now as in any other time in history.

Fact- median household income is declining.


Good luck with your housing "bottom"......