Cos Cobber – yeah, the Japanese example is probably too extreme. Instead of decling prices for 15 years, I’m thinking maybe…only 8 years. Good times ahead! I guarantee you that birthrates and immigration in the U.S. are both going to decline significantly. Lack of shelter (foreclosures), healthcare, food, and jobs has a way of doing that.

And anyway there is a HUGE difference between buying a home and imvesting in a house.

Most of the “houses” CF dithers about have flipped two or three times in the past 10 years.

unfortunately, when the speculative “house” market crashes, it take its toll on “home” prices too.

Imagine that!

Your house’s $ value may rise or fall, the tax angles of home ownership may change, you may note ruefully the woulda-coulda-shoulda- opportunities that you let pass you by,
BUT
if you insist on thinking of your home as a readily-tradeable asset that you’re supposed to squeeze every possible 32nd out of, rather than a place you’re happy to come home to at the end of the day … well, hell, you might as well sell it now (even at a steep loss) to see about discount ownership opportunities at those Crown Heights, Brooklyn “luxury condos” being turned into homeless housing that CF posted about a few days ago. Or the begging-for-buyers “luxury condos” in Hoboken we talked about here six months ago… I’ll bet their pricing is quite good now.

Really, folks. Buy a house you can afford in a place you want to live. Ignore magazines/financial news features/TV shows that tell you to do ANYTHING about your home other than maintain it. Don’t feel pressured to decorate as if the Architectural Digest Taste Police and their camera crew are going to pull a surprise visit; they aren’t. And don’t forget that no matter how grand your house is, you’re still not part of the Hapsburg dynasty; you’re just YOU, living there, padding into the kitchen in your sweatpants at 11 p.m. looking for those Girl Scout Thin Mints you swear you put in the freezer back in March.

This wkend’s Barron’s Abelson column also references some work by Tilson and Field Check Gp about struggles of higher-end housing mkt

To-date, much media attn has been on low-end foreclosures and house prices but little focus on illiquidity and distress in high-end mkts throughout US

Conversely, America has among the highest birthrates among industrialized countries (thank you SUVs and Mini Vans which are poised to be sin taxed into oblivion?) and more porous borders / immigration policies.

An extended period of decline seems more likely than not, but anything matching Japan’s decline seems less likely than the article gives credence too.