It was just seven short years ago that the prices at the epicenter of the housing bubble, Los Angeles, CA rose by 50% every six months as the nation experienced its first parabolic move higher in home prices courtesy of Alan Greenspan's disastrous policies: a time when everyone knew intuitively the housing market was in an epic bubble, yet which nobody wanted to pop because there was just too much fun to be had chasing the bouncing ball, not to mention money. Well, courtesy of the real-time real estate pricing trackers at Altos Research [8], we now know that the very worst of the housing bubble is not only back, but it is at levels not seen since the days when a house in the Inland Empire was only a faint glimmer of the prototype for BitCoin.
Exhibit A:
The red line is the 7 day rolling average of median LA house prices per Altos (more data here [9]). It is up 50% since the beginning of the year. One can only stand back and stare.
[10]
Still not convinced? After all those West Coast folks are known for being a little trigger happy when it comes to "flipping that house." Which is why, from the heartland of the East Coast, we present...
Exhibit B [11]:
The Gretsch building, an old guitar factory turned condo building in Williamsburg, just had a crazy week: Crain’s [12] reports that three units sold in all-cash transactions, each one setting new highs on a per-square-foot basis. The units in questions were two adjacent two-bedrooms on the ninth floor, selling for $1.4 million and $1.5 million, and a larger two-bedroom on the 10th floor selling at $2.5 million — all at an average of $1,150 per square foot. “It needs to be cash, it needs to be over ask, and (the listing) will never see the light of day,” the broker had told all the buyers. According to Crain’s, Williamsburg condos are currently averaging $794 per square foot, with high-end condos like Northside Piers bringing in closer to $1,050 per foot. The broker who handled the Gretsch sales at 60 Broadway can’t seem to believe it herself: “It’s unbelievable what’s going on out there,” she told Crain’s. Our question is, can the high sales we’ve been seeing lately be a bubble based on low mortgage rates if the buyers are paying record-setting prices with all cash? 3 Condos Sold in Williamsburg at Record Prices [12] [Crain's]
Great job Bernanke & Co. You have succeeded at rolling up the housing, credit, bond, tech and equity bubbles all into one.
Watching the glorious unwind of all this unprecedented academic-created stupidity will be worth the hyperinflated price of admission alone.
h/t @Gloeschi