The housing price declines continue apace...with no bottom in sight...
Nor will there be a bottom in the immediate future...
Housing not only has the recent bubble to deal with...it has some underlying demographic problems as yet unnoticed...
Frist of all...young buyers have lower wages and can not afford starter home prices...
As the higher paying jobs are eliminated, or are sent off shore...affordablity becomes a Big, Big factor.
Additionally, there simply are not enough younger buyers to offset the supply provided by downsizing Baby Boomers... Simply put, there is a lack of young people in the US to take up the slack in US demographics post Boomer... Foreigners are helping; but they are still not enough.
Finally, the entire housing bubble was really a house of cards...where everyone was "trading up"....but if you didn't have a seat at the table you were totally out of the game... In other words it was like the dotcom bubble prices... I'll trade you two $500 cats for your $1000 dog...!
Once you eliminate the "trade up trade" you knock a hole in the price bucket...
And house prices can decline without limit where there is no demand... Of course you could always argue that a house is at least "worth" the material that is used to make it...the sticks and stones...so to speak...
Yet there are a lot of ghetto neighborhoods where the house is free...and all you pay for is the land...and that's nearly free...!
As this "annus horribilis" continues I suspect that the housing price collapse will start to bite the economy in ways as yet uncovered in the Main Stream Media...
