News Details (Posted: July 2, 2008):

Realty Viewpoint: Bears Maul Stocks, Focus Off Of Housing

Full Description:

It's official. Wall Street has declared a bear market.

The stock market is said to be in a bear market if the Dow industrials have lost over 20 percent off their highs. We reached a high of over 14,000 on October 9, 2007. Yesterday, the DOW dipped to just above 11,200.

That's a much faster decline than housing, which lost 6.3 percent from May 2007 to '08, according to the National Association of Realtors. Home prices are down 17 percent in April since reaching their highs back in 2005, says the negatively-biased Case-Shiller index. If you use the NAR's numbers, sales prices started to decline in July 2006. Compared to a median price of $230,000 then, a similar home for sale today is worth $208,600, or a little under nine percent less.

Maybe that will move the mass hysteria away from housing.

Now, whether the financial press likes it or not, it appears as though we're headed for a recession. And housing isn't the culprit -- it's gas.

Homebuyers changed their behavior when house prices outpaced income and lenders dried up the money tree. The same thing is happening with gas. When it took four times income to buy a home, consumers rebelled. Now that gas is over $4 a gallon, consumers have reached the pain threshold, and are putting the brakes on truck and car sales.

Year-to-year, GM has lost 70 percent of its stock value, and is at the lowest share price since 1954. Ford has lost 49 percent of share value, says the University of Chicago's Center for Research in Security Prices.

Those losses are huge, but where's the panic? When housing lost median value for the first time in 2006, the media went ballistic. But when the DOW loses 20 percent, the media is already looking for Pollyannas to tell us the sun will be out tomorrow.

Already the press is flooded with stories -- is it the bottom? GM is madly working on 16 new vehicles, mostly hybrids and cars. Is it time to reinvest in GM?

Are you kidding? Consumers are still bleeding. Wages aren't keeping up with inflation. Payrolls have been cut for five months in a row.

Bear markets don't last long, they tell us. Now's the time to start looking for bargains, they tell us.

At least we can turn off the worry button for inflation, the press tells us.

Funny, where was all this optimism and opportunism when housing started losing value?

Sheesh.

by Blanche Evans