Friday, August 12, 2005

Real Estate Tracking

I've been tracking how many homes are listed for sale on the NY Times website over the last couple of months, for both Manhattan and Brooklyn. This is my somewhat lame way of trying to see if my bubble-bursting tactics are paying off (god, I am so sick of lugging that tuba around!)
Well, I can't say I'm seeing results. The number of places for sale doesn't seem to have ballooned at all. It's pretty much stayed flat, with slight increases and decreases week to week.
Of course, I am only tracking the NYT ads. There could be plenty of places for sale that are not advertised there. They may only have a limited number of ad listings. Real estate agents might not advertise too many places, to give the impression of a tighter market. There are a million reasons why this is not statistically valid.
Oh well. Last night I sat around with a friend and talked about how much apartment I could afford if I suddenly got a $50,000 raise. Probably a nice one-bedroom or smallish two bedroom in Brooklyn, woo-hoo!

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

I'm totally feeling you on this topic. I live in Manhattan and want to jump on the real estate band wagon in the city, but I just don't want to be upside down on a mortgage loan. I had that happen on a car loan. I bought the car new, but I sold it within the first year because of my move to NYC. I had to find the cash to pay off the balance of the loan.

The bubble is starting to deflate in Denver, DC & Vegas. I'm waiting for it to make it's way up to the northeast. I'm planning on buying in 2007.

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Jose Anes said...

I also track real estate postings on my area. Apparently houses are taking longer to sell. They are more expensive than last year, but not increasing at such crazy rate as they where.

I do not know if there will be a bubble. I am counting more on a slight deflation: like a 5 to 10% price reduction followed by years of lousy appreciation.

Money and Investing

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Anonymous said...

Check it out, Real estate is getting slaughtered in the places that had the big run offs, especially in California:

http://www.realestatejournal.com/buysell/realestateindex/20060906-elite.html