As a reader once stated, Fish..'you write an obscure blog that no-body reads'. He/She was right. It was therapy for me, a way of thinking aloud.
In any case I would have about 130 readers on a busy day and 100 on a quiet one. The same folks.
The numbers have recently been moving up. Last Friday they reached
253!
Who are these new readers? They could only be coming from 4 groups:
1) Those that own but don't want to sell
2) Those that own but want to sell
3) Those that don't own but want to buy
4) Those that don't own and don't want to buy
Groups 1 and 4 aren't going to waste their time reading a RE blog, so it is the potential buyers and sellers who have flocked here.
I wonder which group is more? I could run a poll if I thought it would be truthfully answered.
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Ok whither the market.
That was a VERY strong bounce from March. It caught a lot of us by surprise. It mirrored the US and Canadian stock-markets. As soon as it was apparent that the world (actually the banks of the world) would not be coming to an end, the buyers rushed out to buy, benefiting from lower mortgage rates and lower prices. For a short time the rent/buy comparison got pretty close.
The mortgage rates have inched up a tiny bit recently, the prices have firmed and so the 'great deals' are not so great. Once again the numbers support renting rather than owning.
Now we are starting to see some early signs of weakness. Two things to remember if we have moved into a bear market:
1) The bubble graph suggests that we should start seeing the drop starting soon or all bets are off.
2) The initial drop is precipitous, the subsequent one long and drawn out.
That would support what a RE-savvy friend said last night at dinner. Now retired, I asked him what to do. You missed the big drop last year when the blood was running in the streets, now you have to wait for the slow drop.
