Housing Prices: Steepest Drop in 20 Years

[Chief]

http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/070828/home_price_index.html?.v=3

Tuesday August 28, 9:43 am ET
By Vinnee Tong, AP Business Writer
S&P Says Housing Prices Fell by Steepest Rate Since Its Index Was Started in 1987

NEW YORK (AP) -- U.S. home prices fell 3.2 percent in the second quarter, the steepest rate of decline since Standard & Poor's began its nationwide housing index in 1987, the group said Tuesday.

The decline in home prices around the nation shows no evidence of a market recovery anytime soon.

MacroMarkets LLC Chief Economist Robert Shiller said the declining residential real estate market "shows no signs of slowing down."

The index tracks the price trends among existing single-family homes across the nation compared with a year earlier .

A separate S&P/Case-Shiller index that covers 20 U.S. cities fell 3.5 percent from a year earlier. A 10-city index fell 4.1 percent from a year earlier.

**SCHNIPP**

I keep hearing that Clark County has so far been immune to this, but I cannot see how that is not going to change, if it was true in the first place.

Still waiting on that reassessment...

Developing...

[karma]

My next question with them dropping will our taxes drop too?? >:D

[Waterbuffalo]

I have an more evil though.. (karma.. I hope your thought didn't get me to think even more evil thoughts.)

If the price of a home goes down, so does the amount of taxes one collects from the levys, property taxes, sales taxes and many other types of local taxes...

Now if City of Vancouver sends out most of the operations, maintenance and future growth monies to bonds.

Would this mean that city would have to raise taxes even further to cover this debt load, service and interest payments that would be higher as a result of the taxes going lower.

[Chief]

They can readjust values, and the millage rate they charge to keep revenues (and your taxes) level for a time. Since we have lived here, we saw one year where they devalued our property, but that was a minor one-time adjustment, and every year since then out assessment has increased, lately, significantly.

WB, I don't believe any of the things you describe would be necessary, because believe it or not, the system is more stable than that, and doesn't correct quickly. And some of the solutions you suggest require voter approval, and it will not come to that any time soon....yet.

The danger lies down the road, if all these hot projects really do tank because of some of the obvious (or what ought to be obvious) problems that are associated with them.

Bosie Cascade is a good example. Let's just say, for conversational purposes, that once those buildings are done, and the Columbia Crossing is completed, that the noise level when a freight train is passing at the same time a jet takes off at Rush Hour, is so high that nobody wil live in this "New City" that you and I just underwrote.

Someone has to pay for all of it, and who is left after Gramor Development's LLC finally goes tits up and walks away??

That's all beside the obvious folly of trying to build 3,000 new condos in a former industrial area at the beginning of a major downturn in the housing markets. The project up here at the old Evergreen Airport tanked because of market pressures and did it early...what is propping up the Bosie site??

The promise of a few brand new teats at City Hall, that's what...

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v645/SeniorChieftain/litteronsow2.jpg

Stout Hearts....