Illusory "Bright Lines"

Two Types of Housing Distress

The key to understanding [the administration's housing] plan will be remembering that there are two different groups of homeowners who are at risk of foreclosure. The first group is made up of people who cannot afford their mortgages and have fallen behind on their monthly payments . . . The second group is far larger. It is made up of the more than 10 million households that can afford their monthly payments but whose houses are worth less than what is owed on their mortgages. In real estate parlance, they are underwater.

--David Leonhardt, "Bailout Likely to Focus on Most Afflicted Homeowners"; The New York Times (2/18/09)

Want to know which group of homeowners receives the higher priority in President Obama's housing bailout, due to be announced today in Phoenix? Look at the price tag.

Conventional wisdom seems to be that helping the first, most distressed group will require around $50 billion; the second, closer to $500 billion.

However, if there's one thing that has become apparent the last two years or so, it's that bright lines dividing one group of troubled homeowners from another are illusory.

Illusory "Bright Lines"

Initially, of course, it was thought that the financial fall-out from the housing downturn was limited to so-called "subprime borrowers" -- all the marginal homeowners who put nothing down using toxic loans with low, initial teaser rates.

With housing nationally now down 20%-25% from the 2006 peak, clearly the pain has spread to the entire market.

Now, the focus is all the homeowners who can afford their mortgages, at least for the time being, but economically would seem to have an incentive to default because their homes have lost so much value.

As the Times' Leonhardt points out, it is the behavior of this second group that holds the key to the housing market -- and perhaps the economy. If they honor their mortgages, things get better; if not . .

P.S.: My post, "What's So Bad About Bad Credit?," addresses this subject as well.

Chasing a Falling Market

Seller's Lament: Always One Price Cut (or More) Behind

This chart shows graphically the perils of initially pricing too high, then trying to catch up to a falling market (note: the X-axis is the number of weeks on the market).

In this case, the home (not my listing, thankfully) came on the market last July 10 at $775,000. Here's what happened next:

July 15: price drop #1: $749,900

Sept. 12: price drop #2: $724,900

Oct. 1: price drop #3: $699,000

Oct. 14: price drop #4: $674,900

Oct. 30: price drop #5: $649,900

Feb. 6: price drop #6: $624,000 (not shown)

Clearly, this Seller is trying -- so far futilely -- to catch up to where the market is. I also find it significant that the first price reduction came only five days after hitting the market: such a quick drop often indicates lack of conviction, coupled with unusually harsh early feedback.

By contrast, I don't place that much signficance on the Seller "sticking" at $649,900 from Oct. 30 to Feb. 6: there's no point in "wasting" a price reduction when relatively few Buyers are actively looking.

Hindsight is 20-20, but my advice to homeowners contemplating selling in today's Buyer's market is two-fold: 1) don't overprice; and 2) if you do, bite the bullet and get ahead of the market in one fell swoop, rather than chase it down with incremental drops.

To paraphrase a well-known saying, unrealistic Sellers suffer many price cuts, the valiant only one . . .