A year ago, when our real estate specialist Mike Larson told a group of analysts that the housing bubble was about to bust, he practically got laughed out of the room.
Nobody believed him. Or at least they didn’t want to believe him.
They all had evidence, personal or anecdotal, that “proved” him wrong.
They told him about a brother turning a small sum into a fortune … about a neighbor’s house getting fifteen bids within minutes of being listed … and about housewives becoming million-dollar-a-year real estate agents.
They were equally quick to come up with “fundamental” reasons why the boom would continue for years to come — low mortgage rates, baby boomers buying second and third homes, land becoming scarce in many parts of the country, and more.
That’s natural. It was hard for them to see. But now, that’s changing rapidly, as Mike will now explain …
The Signs of a Housing Slowdown
Are as Prevalent as the “For Sale”
Signs on Front Lawns
by Michael Larson
Thanks, Martin. The signs are definitely getting easier to see. If people still don’t recognize them, it’s because they’re choosing not to. Let me cut to the chase …
Consider Toll Brothers (TOL). If you don’t know Toll, it’s the biggest publicly traded builder of “McMansions” — those ostentatious, oversized homes that popped up all over the U.S.
It was flying high. But now look at how it’s getting utterly slaughtered.
This is a stock that was trading for about $58 and has now plunged by more than HALF in just a few months, crashing through all support levels, and heading still lower.
In short, the market has spoken, and we’re no longer alone: The market itself is now forecasting a real estate bust. Not a “soft landing.” Not a “maybe-bust someday.” It’s forecasting an outright collapse, starting right now.
Still not convinced? Then take a look at the chart of another major homebuilder, KB Home (KBH). You’ll see the exact same kind of action.
What this tells me is that we’re not seeing a company-specific problem, but rather an industry-wide trend.
Need more proof?
Right now, we’re in “confession season” for the big public builders. And boy do they have a lot to talk about:
- Pulte Homes says its orders dropped 29% year-over-year in April and May
- Toll Brothers reports second-quarter orders plunged 33%
- Standard Pacific’s orders are down a whopping 41% year over year
- But the title of “MVB,” or “most vulnerable builder,” has to go to WCI Communities. This firm has been throwing up single-family homes and condo buildings all over Florida, greater Washington D.C., and New York City. First-quarter “tower” orders — high-rise condo units — imploded, falling 71%. That’s astounding!
These are the stocks Wall Street kept telling you would “outperform the market” … the ones they said “would keep posting record profits for years to come” … the ones whose shares they kept flogging with “buy” recommendation after “buy” recommendation.
Sound familiar? It should — it’s the same kind of garbage we heard about tech stocks in 1999.
And what you’re seeing in these homebuilder stocks is the same kind of action we saw back in the tech wreck in stocks like Cisco … Intel … Amazon.com … Pets.com.
Remember: Cisco went from $10 to $80 and back in the span of just over two years; stocks like Pets.com just vanished into thin air. That’s what we see happening in housing stocks.
That makes sense. Like the tech boom in the 1990s, the housing boom was a falsely inflated, super-juiced, speculative bubble.
And like the tech boom, it was set into motion by a reckless, money-pumping Federal Reserve Board.
The men and women at the Fed have repeatedly demonstrated contempt for the true value of our money and financial security. They keep inflating bubble after bubble. Then when those bubbles burst, they don’t let the darn market work its cleansing magic. Instead, they pour even more liquidity into the market … giving rise to the next mania.
The Speculators Are Going to Lose
Big Money; Save Yourself
What does all this mean for home prices? That it’s too late to avoid a major bust.
Is the Fed going to sit by and let it happen without lifting a finger? Of course not. But the most they can do is temporarily cushion the blow.
No matter what the Fed does, I just don’t see an easy way out for housing. Instead, I see a multi-year downturn and real economic pain.
Real estate is already starting to fall apart all around us. No, prices aren’t going to collapse almost 90% like Cisco’s shares did. But mark my words: Calling this a “soft landing” will be like calling the dot-bomb bust a “gentle correction” …
- Sales are going to keep falling.
- Inventories are going to keep rising.
- Defaults and foreclosures are going to skyrocket.
- And prices on a wide variety of properties are going to fall in vast swaths of the U.S.
You can follow the signs of the housing bust right down the chain to local markets.
Heck, right here in my zip code (33458), there were recently 574 properties with at least two bedrooms and two bathrooms for sale between $100,000 and $500,000, according to Realtor.com. When I started tracking almost a year ago, only 150 fit that description. That’s a 283% increase. Almost four times as many houses, condos, and town homes are piling up, still unsold.
In one nearby community, called Chasewood, the same listings have been sitting on the market month after month. The lowest priced unit used to be listed at around $210,000. Now, you can score one for just under $175,000. That’s almost a 17% drop in just the past several months!
You think these kinds of price declines are over? No freaking way! That’s because so much of the surging demand for houses in the past couple of years was “false” demand from wild-eyed speculators.
These people have no idea how true real estate investors make money — buying low and selling high, generating positive cash flow from rent once all expenses are deducted, etc.
Instead, the speculators bought houses by the dozen, hoping to unload them to “greater fools.” Many never even expected to have to close — they planned on buying contracts and flipping them before the places were even built.
Now, the market is collapsing under their feet, and they’re getting hosed. They’re being forced to take possession of properties they can’t afford … can’t rent out at positive cash flow … and can’t carry.
So they’re trying to sell. But who’s buying? After all, the speculators were a huge chunk of the “buy side” of the market in the first place.
Meet Dena Webster, recently
profiled by our local paper,
The Palm Beach Post ...
Ms. Webster bought 14 houses in my area during the boom. Now, she’s stuck with a whopping $50,000 in monthly mortgage payments.
But only four of those properties have tenants, and those tenants are paying monthly rents that are far lower than Ms. Webster’s payments. Cash is gushing out the door month after month!
And it gets worse: Ms. Webster is a real estate agent herself. Not only is she loaded up with poorly performing real estate investments, she also relies on real estate sales to make a living. Talk about a recipe for disaster! And don’t think for a minute that similar stories aren’t playing out all over this country.
My view: If you’re overexposed to the residential real estate market, you have a choice. You can go down with the ship or you can take steps to protect yourself …
First, if you’re selling a home right now, don’t muck around on price. Price your property at, even below, recent comparable sales. If you start high, chances are your property will just sit and sit. The listing will get stale — and cutting prices by dribs and drabs will merely leave you chasing the market down.
Second, if you have residential investment property that doesn’t produce positive cash flow, dump it. There’s no telling how long this downturn will last. But I’m expecting at least a few years … maybe more.
Remember, real estate investments aren’t like stocks. If you buy a stock and hold it, you don’t have to pay carrying costs. However, when you borrow money to buy real estate, you have to pay for it — mortgage, taxes, insurance, upkeep — month in and month out. Even if prices merely flatten out, you could still be losing real money.
Third, if you’re in the market for a place to live, compare the costs of renting vs. owning. Prices are so out of whack in many markets, that renting beats owning hands down. Just go back to that Post story I mentioned earlier. It said:
“According to local real-estate agents, condominiums and single-family homes throughout Palm Beach County and the Treasure Coast are leasing for 30 to 50 percent less than the monthly costs, including property taxes and sky-high insurance premiums, of owning the same property.”
Fourth, take a good look at your other investments. No matter what happens to the broad market, I can tell you that certain sectors look ridiculously vulnerable to me. As I’ve shown you, the housing stocks are already collapsing. But what about the companies that supply all those builders with cement and kitchen cabinets? Or the temp agencies supplying construction labor? Or the lenders making the high-risk mortgages behind the bubble?
Fifth, seriously consider taking out “real estate crash insurance.” You wouldn’t dream of owning a home without insurance to protect you against fire, storms or theft. And yet, the financial damage we see ahead could be greater and more widespread than all the other threats combined. For more details, see my report, just posted to my Web page last night.
Until next time,
Mike
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MONEY AND MARKETS (MaM) is published by Weiss Research, Inc. and written by Martin D. Weiss along with Sean Brodrick, Larry Edelson, Michael Larson, Nilus Mattive, and Tony Sagami. To avoid conflicts of interest, Weiss Research and its staff do not hold positions in companies recommended in MaM. Nor do we accept any compensation for such recommendations. The comments, graphs, forecasts, and indices published in MaM are based upon data whose accuracy is deemed reliable but not guaranteed. Performance returns cited are derived from our best estimates but must be considered hypothetical inasmuch as we do not track the actual prices investors pay or receive. Regular contributors and staff include John Burke, Colleen Collins, Amber Dakar, Ekaterina Evseeva, Monica Lewman-Garcia, Wendy Montes de Oca, Jennifer Moran, Red Morgan, and Julie Trudeau.
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