Just waiting for the magic words; "Don't panic"

I hope, then maybe I can afford a house here. 

I hope, then maybe I can afford a house here.

You're not a student of economics or history, are you?

What happens is those who can still afford their mortgages and rents stay where they are unless they need to move.  That causes a drop in available housing inventory. 

Drop in inventory equals a lower supply.  Lower prices due to the crash equals higher demand.  When supply drops and demand increases, prices remain high for those willing and able to afford the homes being listed.

What also happens is equity turns negative.  If the market value of a home drops, the owner can't leverage as much, if any, of their equity.  Equity loans pay for cars, school tuition, medical expenses, and other high dollar purchases and obligations. 

If interest rates drop, many won't be able to refinance to take advantage of lower rates if they don't have enough equity in the home.

Then there are the people who bought homes in the past 5-10 years.  if they need to sell due to a change in their lives, they may not be able to afford to sell as their mortgage balance might be higher than the offers -- i.e. upside-down mortgage.

Then there's the constant upkeep and improvements which home refinancing and equity loans make possible.  It's rare to hire anyone to do work on your home and spend less than $10,000.  A new roof for mine would be over $24K.  That's insane.

Even if prices fell as you hope, I doubt you'd be in the market.  You don't strike me as someone who can tell when a market is recovering.

As a point in history to look at, try September 2001.  Right after the 9/11 attacks, interest rates were cut significantly.  This followed about 12 years of housing prices in Hawaii steadily dropping year after year.  That's the main reason I kept my house in VA as a rental (tax advantages), and rented here from 1992-2001  What started as an $1,800/mon rental home in Mililani ended up being $1,100 when I moved out -- all to keep us in the house paying rent.

Once interest rates dropped, home prices were bound to increase, so in October, we started house hunting.  By the time we closed in Dec, we managed to get a home that had been on the market for $550K for $338K.  A couple of months after closing, we refinanced after interest rates were cut again.  The tax assessment on the house is now over $1M.

I don't see a housing bubble bursting like what I was able to take advantage of.  During Obama's first year, there was a massive housing crisis caused by a huge number of toxic mortgage loans trading on the open market.  People lost their homes  mostly due to getting into mortgage agreements they couldn't afford.  On top of that were the predatory loans that included variable rates and balloon payments.  Add to all that the new rules passed by Congress that didn't require lenders to verify employment or income.

So, how is the next bubble going to go?  if you haven't taken the time to understand past market crashes, you probably won't know when it's a good time for you to buy.

One other thing -- when prices drop, those owning rental properties with pre-bubble-burst mortgages may not have the equity to refinance for lower payments.  So, they will have to either keep rents high to make the mortgage payments, they may have to lower rents to compete with the sellers' market, or they may be forced to sell their rental at potentially a loss.  If they lower the asking rent amount, they may be in a cash flow deficit each month.

I timed the market already and have a condo.   We also have secure jobs so all I need is a bunch of bankruptcies and  housing prices to crash.   Interest rates will follow.  A 2008 will be good enough.   Plenty of people are underwater with car loans and debt.  Might be the only thing the idiot in chief will help me with.   He hasent even come close to do anything pro 2a.   ATF is still anti gun.  No new laws are planned.   No executive actions etc. 

I timed the market already and have a condo.   We also have secure jobs so all I need is a bunch of bankruptcies and  housing prices to crash.   Interest rates will follow.  A 2008 will be good enough.   Plenty of people are underwater with car loans and debt.  Might be the only thing the idiot in chief will help me with.   He hasent even come close to do anything pro 2a.   ATF is still anti gun.  No new laws are planned.   No executive actions etc.

Yeah.  He's really dragging his feet.  It's been all of what ... 3 whole months?  Maybe if activist judges would follow the law, he'd have more time to spend on the issues you think are more important?

 

Car loans and mortgages are different animals.  Cars are expected to depreciate in value, while homes are investments buyers expect will appreciate in value over the long term -- at least enough to beat inflation.  Trump's signaling he's about to reverse Biden's Executive Action on student loans, requiring the borrowers to pay the money back.  That's a good thing, since the loans get paid back either by the borrower or us tax payers. 

A home is one of the few tax shelters remaining that the average person can afford and have a decent chance of enjoying at least some return on the investment.

Your attitude on this issue is extremely self-centered and unsympathetic toward everyone else.  I thought Democrats were supposed to be all caring!

I’ve been waiting for this crash for 10 years now but they kept the bubbles going with COVID money. Now it’s really going to be awful for investors, but there will also be some great opportunities once they stop trying to take over the ag land.

Yeah.  He's really dragging his feet.  It's been all of what ... 3 whole months?  Maybe if activist judges would follow the law, he'd have more time to spend on the issues you think are more important?

 

Car loans and mortgages are different animals.  Cars are expected to depreciate in value, while homes are investments buyers expect will appreciate in value over the long term -- at least enough to beat inflation.  Trump's signaling he's about to reverse Biden's Executive Action on student loans, requiring the borrowers to pay the money back.  That's a good thing, since the loans get paid back either by the borrower or us tax payers. 

A home is one of the few tax shelters remaining that the average person can afford and have a decent chance of enjoying at least some return on the investment.

Your attitude on this issue is extremely self-centered and unsympathetic toward everyone else.  I thought Democrats were supposed to be all caring!

What do you mean he is crashing everything at record speeds.   With his moronic tariffs and no solid economic plans.   

I timed the market already and have a condo.   We also have secure jobs so all I need is a bunch of bankruptcies and  housing prices to crash.   Interest rates will follow.  A 2008 will be good enough.   Plenty of people are underwater with car loans and debt.  Might be the only thing the idiot in chief will help me with.   He hasent even come close to do anything pro 2a.   ATF is still anti gun.  No new laws are planned.   No executive actions etc.

Timed the market and all you got was a condo? I guess you didn't read Art of the Deal

you were doing so well the past couple months...

What do you mean he is crashing everything at record speeds.   With his moronic tariffs and no solid economic plans.

Well, all I know is I originally bought my home with a conventional 20% down 30 year mortgage at 4%.

I refinanced when interest rates dropped and did not take any cash out. My 30 year rate is at 2.875%.

I do not plan on moving and at my age, will probably die here.

What do you mean he is crashing everything at record speeds.   With his moronic tariffs and no solid economic plans.

You didn't address the issue.  You just keep throwing ambiguous claims at the wall hoping one will stick.

As for tariffs:

President Trump's tariffs have been shown to strengthen the U.S. economy
by reducing imports and stimulating domestic production, particularly in
industries like manufacturing and steel. Studies indicate that these tariffs
have led to job creation and increased investment in American industries.

https://www.whitehouse.gov/articles/2025/04/tariffs-work-and-president-trumps-first-term-proves-it/

As shown in Table 1, we project that tariffs will raise $5.2 trillion in new
revenue over the next 10 years, even after accounting for reduced import
demand due to higher prices. Over the next 30 years, tariffs are expected
to raise revenues of $16.4 trillion. (These revenues fall to $4.5 trillion and
$11.8 trillion, respectively, on a dynamic basis.) This revenue can be used
to reduce federal debt relative to the baseline path. Table 1 also shows that
President Trump's tariffs will reduce total imports by $6.9 trillion over the
next decade and by $37.2 trillion through 2054. These reductions in imports
will also reduce capital flow.

https://budgetmodel.wharton.upenn.edu/issues/2025/4/10/economic-effects-of-president-trumps-tariffs

Go read the thread with all the posts on why the tariffs are working.

Most people don't understand the game that Trump is playing here.

The dollar has been the world reserve currency since the end of world war 2, which means we can print as much as we want and everyone else has to use it. Once you take away that status there's no reason for the rest of the world to send us cheap stuff, and we go back to whatever we can produce locally. The Obiden plan aka aka agenda 21 (and 2030) was to use the chaos of the transition to impose tyrannical government and replace us with foreign workers who don't know their rights and will work for pennies on the dollar while living in squalor. That way the billionaires can maintain their status even as the rest of the country falls apart. Trump realized this in his first term when they went after him, yet somehow managed to survive and now his plan is to reindustrialize so that we won't be totally up a creek without a paddle once the dollar crashes. Without him we would have gone full Weimar and some Hitler like figure would have risen up to overthrow the billionaires (because they are actually really stupid) and the result would have been the balkanization of the USA into warring factions.

Major pain cannot be avoided and all our lifestyles are still going to take a significant downgrade, but at least we won't have to continue supporting a huge class of parasites who's only job was to game the system and don't have any skills besides milking the taxpayers and destroying the middle class with funny money asset bubbles. Dumping that burden will be a huge relief to working people as the demand for skilled labor goes up while the cost of living a modest life comes way down, but a lot of folks who are depending on the current system for their retirement income will be SOL.  There will probably still be social security checks going out, but you won't be able to buy anything with them and we can forget about the 401k's once the stock market goes.

That is IF Trump is successful, and you better pray he is because the alternative is so much worse.

It took decades to come to where we are today, but:

see what happens when you say "ainokea", don't vote, and don't make an effort to get involved with what's happening in politics?

The parasites start to reign.

And what's happening now is they are fighting tooth and nail to remain that way.

Kinda like your everyday stove top.  It's so much easier to maintain and clean if you do it more often than not.  When you don't give a sh*t is when the crud builds up, gets burned on and is practically impossible to remove.

Then there's the constant upkeep and improvements which home refinancing and equity loans make possible.  It's rare to hire anyone to do work on your home and spend less than $10,000.  A new roof for mine would be over $24K.  That's insane.

Tell me about that. We have been improvers, sellers and purchasers, in the past two years. First, a new roof on our primary home was estimated to cost $155,000 in east Oahu. Not the price of an asphalt tile, but concrete tile. There are homes in what used to be "reasonable" investments in Kapolei (west Oahu). These modest houses had Monier tile roofs. That company was purchased by another company, and zoom, up went the replacement costs. It is so expensive to replace tile roofs now that many of my neighbors put off the repair, and rely on a hurricane to entertain the project. I am not in a position to take a 100% hit for this replacement. It was cheaper to just replace 30 faulty tiles for $3000.
As for selling a property, that has been the most hellish experience since 2008. My wife took out a hard money loan on a condo. This bled close to $85K from our assets. She had no idea about how to smoothly complete the fixups needed to put the property on the market. She had one buyer who needed to obtain a VA loan in 2025. This took nearly two months to complete. The gubmint surprisingly approved the required loan amount, which allowed the wife to avoid defaulting on her hard money loan. I have no idea about the future of the VA loan process, with or without DOGE meddling. If you are a veteran and need to buy a home, good luck before the market collapses.
The third thing we did in the past two years was buying a home for one of our Ohana. If an individual or family has to go through the hoops to obtain a loan in this time frame, it will be worse than getting a root canal, heart transplant, and brain surgery. Most old homes have undocumented improvements, and while lenders seem to ignore these features, the Department of Planning and Permits could make your life hellish, in the future.
Real estate investment in 2025 will be a challenge. This youtube video is one of the pessimistic views of the housing market.

I hope, then maybe I can afford a house here.

Wow, so you want a housing market crash just so you can upgrade.  Screw everyone else right?

I would want the market in certain places to go back to how they were before unrelated influences. Take Vegas as an example. in 2020, their house prices increased big time not only due to the low interest rates, but all the CA people fleeing to Vegas. Cause "it's cheaper than in CA" mentality causing bidding wars and price increases.  A $300K home in 2020 increased to $400K in less than a year and today that same home about $450K as of Jan 2025. But now it's slowly going down to $420K as 46% of their homes are sitting on the market with zero offers.

And of course, HI had none of the above, hence my "certain places" statement.