Housing poll

The housing market in my community will ...

With the credit crisis, we can see it's all meltdown...

Not so. Only specific regions of the country are suffering from anything close to "meltdowns".

My part of the country is quite healthy, thank you very much. We didn't experience the run-up, and so we're not experiencing the crash.

I bought my current house in April of 2005. Based on comps in the neighborhood it went up in value by about 15 percent. It’s now down about 15 percent for a break-even net. I plan on being in this house another 20 years, so no big deal either way really.

I'm in Johnson County, KS. Never a boom area, so we aren't seeing big drops in value. And, since more "normal" people can afford houses here without resorting to exotic loans and over-extending themselves, there aren't a lot of "For Sale" signs in my neighborhood as people try to get out of loans they can't afford.

You know So Cal is always cited as a booming area and at times it is. But over the 26 yrs I've owned my home, its value has only kept pace with inflation. Unless you are using leverage and turning 'em over frequently, I'd say single home residential RE is a pretty poor investment around here.

Im calling a meltdown...I hope I am wrong.

Mostly housing in California, Nevada, Arizona, and Florida are the only places with widespread "meltdown"...probably the same reason the PMI companies have redlined those states. With the fuel cost crisis, I would think most urban areas would be buffered from any dramatic falls in value, since living closer to work is increasingly desireable. I suspect suburbs without convenient shopping or other commercial areas nearby will also suffer substantially. And exurbs may soon be a thing of the past unless they develop local city centers with commercial self-sufficiency.