Wednesday, May 23, 2012

An indication

I just witnessed my first house auction, purely as a looky-loo. Nice little place on a fairly large lot. It went for $85,000. A previous owner of the property happened to show up; he too was playing looky-loo. We got to talking, and he said that he had sold the place in 2005 for almost exactly $100,000 more.

Obviously, this is far, far from the most extreme case of home depreciation. But this anecdote tells you something about the shape of our economy. Is Fox News still trying to convince people that our big problem is inflation...?

4 comments:

Aeryl said...

Not to disagree with you about falling home prices, but a 15% dip in value at auction is kinda typical. The purpose of the auction is that the home isn't selling at market value(or just to recoup lost assets). My bff bought two homes at auction, and he only 60% of market value for them, and that was before the housing market went bust.

INCOMING!!!!!!! said...

Get to arithmetic class.

Propertius said...

Aeryl,

He didn't say the previous owner had sold it for $100,000. He said the previous owner had sold it for $100,000 more, i.e. $185,000. That would be a 54% drop, not 15%.

Mr. Mike said...

Aeryl @ 12:42, RIF (Reading Is Fundamental). But who would name their kid after a radio part anyway.
Cheap credits is the same as printing money, inflationary.