Ben Nicolas

Question for person that posed the original question. What does what seller paid have to do with your offer? New York was purchased for a bunch of trinkets by the Dutch a long time ago if I wanted to buy it today would that be relavent to my offer price?

people buy based on over all affordability of available financing packages. There are starting to be homes in the $200-400k price range in certain areas of LA county that most people could affored the payments on. After the tax deduction may even be better off financially then their current rental situation but they don't have the 10-20% down. The entire loan package has to be affordable. Bottomline is that prices need to be in line with peoples real wages. Until prices are in line with the real wages Americans are earning we won't see an end to the price declines or foreclosures. Any gov't intervention will only delay this inevitable reckoning. Ben Nicolas www.ietrealestate.com

The way I see it the naivety and foolishness of both Wall Street and Main Street could only be reigned in by an economic event of this magnitude. How can any responsible homeowner or investor buy a home for a resonable price when there are complete and utter fools paying non-sensical prices? Unless people get foreclosed on and lose their property what is going to teach them that they shouldn't overextend themselves? Unless banks go out of business for lending too easily and not having proper underwriting standards what would ever make them change their ways? People in this country have been living in a dream world for too long. We need to learn how to live a more frugal lifestyle and be more conscientious with regards to conserving resources and consumption. We're not going to suddenly turn into a 3rd world country but most Americans (especially the ones who have never spent significant time outside of the country) need a sharp reduction in what we believe we are entitled to. Home values need to correspond to actual incomes, spending budgets need to be less than tax revenue. As much as everyone wants to make our economic woes seem so complicated I think its all really pretty simple...