Well, while Barry may be overly optimistic with a forecast of current prices being only 10 percent overpriced, I do think he is dead-on right about something very big that is profoundly affecting the stalemate in the current real estate marketplace: Homes Are Being Priced Too High By Sellers With Unreasonable “Bubble-Era” Expectations.
From Yahoo Finance:
“Money-manager Barry Ritholtz has a message for the National Association of REALTORS, the trade group that always puts a sunny spin on the outlook for the housing market, no matter how horrific the facts may be:
You’re making the problem
Ritholtz, who runs Fusion IQ and writes The Big Picture blog, says that the NAR’s happy spin is making homeowners too optimistic about the prices they’ll be able to get–thus encouraging them to price their houses too high.
In this market, says Ritholtz, houses priced realistically sell quickly. But since the majority of sellers are still dreaming of the good old days, most houses are priced too high and aren’t selling. If the NAR would stop spinning and start helping sellers get more realistic, Ritholtz says, the housing market would fix itself more quickly.
But wherever house prices end up, Ritholtz says, the NAR is part of the problem. If sellers were more realistic about the market reality, more houses would be selling.”
The NAR adding to the problem. Imagine that…
The full article –
