The Local Real Estate Market Is Cratering As I Type

I registered for a Redfin update for my local area a couple of years ago to see what was happening around here and watched that whole feeding frenzy go crazy in real time.

No joke, the AVERAGE price of a house in my area jumped One Hundred Thousand Dollars in one year.

Insanity ruled.

People making offers thousands of dollars over asking price .My Parents place sold for a ridiculous amount of money after being on the market for two weeks, a cash offer , WITH NO INSPECTION REQUIRED!

Absolutely crazy.

It was typical of what was going on all over the country.

Well, times have changed.

Like I said, I get these email updates from this outfit.

Over the last two weeks I have deleted HUNDREDS of notices of houses announcing ASKING PRICE DROPS.

There were also several notices of Asking Price Increases, people still chasing the ones P.T Barnam allegedly spoke about all those years ago.

The price drops outpacing the increases twenty to one.

Can you say Market Correction?

Reality has finally started creeping back in and now there are going to be millions of people who are going to be finding themselves UPSIDE DOWN in their over priced dwellings.

In the mean time, The Fed has jacked up the interest rates so mortgage rates naturally followed right along and now DEMAND has fallen off a cliff.

Contractors are seeing record numbers of people backing out of home building deals and are stuck building houses just to finish them so they can sit unsold and unoccupied.

I have been waiting at least ten years for this market correction to happen. I have also been watching dumbfounded as the price of housing has skyrocketed year after year after year.

With mortgage rates now so high, nobody is closing deals unless they absolutely have to.

Now I am waiting to see where the bottom is.

Because this should be a looooooooong drop.

Anyone Out There Want To Spend $285.000.00 On A “New” 1964 Ford F-250 4X4? You Can Upgrade It for Another $40,000 For Two Tone Paint And A Tow Package.

I’m dead serious.

Florida’s Velocity Modern Classics  rebuilds ’em from the frame up, puts a new 5.0 L “Coyote” engine in ’em, brand new interior, Drive Train etc. and is asking $285 Grand.

If you want the Two Tone paint, a Tow Package, Billet Hardware and some other goodies, it’ll run ya $325.000.00.

And Someone, is actually buying these things!

Oh it’s nice, don’t get me wrong but let me show you something here.

One of my Brothers picked up this completely restored 76 Ford F-250 4X4 last year with a rebuilt 360 V8, brand new interior etc. etc. etc.,

for $27.000.00.

Still had the plastic over the new carpeting.

Silly me, here I thought this thing was expensive!

It’s a sweet assed truck too, trust me, I drove it.

You will notice, the total purchase price included a custom front bumper, winch and there is a freaking tow package hanging off the ass under another custom bumper!!

Anyone who pays over a Quarter of a Million Dollars for a pickup is a COMPLETE fucking moron with WAY too much disposable income in my book.

I’m Sure You Are Going To Find This Hard To Believe

Buuuuuut, I gave away and entire pickup load of shit out of the garage yesterday.

I have a good friend that I used to work with that lives about a mile and a half away.

We give and swap tools and materials to each other constantly.

He’s the one that found the vintage Delta drill press at a a garage sale for ten bucks and hauled fifteen miles to my house.

He has a sister who recently bought a second hand store down at the coast and she showed up the other day and gave me a boat load of old wooden handled screwdrivers that she had been collecting out of the things she finds to sell.

Like twenty of them.

As the three of us were sitting around swapping tales a thought occurred to me that I figured would be a Win Win for both of us.

She recently bought a used Toyota Tacoma with a canopy on it and had brought that up, almost empty.

I asked how long she was going to be in town and she said they had some family gathering going on Saturday and this was Wednesday evening.

Perfect.

I told her to swing by my place Friday after work and I would load her up with shit she could sell at this second hand store and make some money off of.

I told her I didn’t want a dime for any of it, she would be doing me a huge service by hauling it off.

About an hour after I got home yesterday here she comes.

I had her back into the driveway and commenced to going through shit.

Old light fixtures, a vintage Craftsman bench top compressor that works, one of those industrial type fans that are two foot across that sits on the floor, an industrial shelving unit with a custom rolling stand I built for it, plus three or four of the old Brace and Bit drivers out of the approximately ten I have laying around

My entire collection of old Ryobi power tools, the batteries and the charger went into a huge plastic storage box and into the shelving unit we laid on it’s back so we could fill it up.

Little projects I had bought off EBay and other places that I had got put back together and painted up like a hand powered grinder with a new 4 inch grinding wheel, a few other things like that, some projects I had never quite got to like a couple more really little hand powered grinders, an antique belt driven bench grinder, some old electric motors, my old shop vac, old hand saws I bought at Goodwill, a vintage Craftsman Miter saw, an old Radio Shack hand held CB Radio, wall chargers by the bucket full, just all kinds of crap that has been laying around that I was never going to use or was just sitting and taking up space.

We had to shove hard to get the tailgate up and the canopy door down.

She was thrilled, I was quite happy to see it all go, especially to a good cause and I told her that I would set some boxes out and start going through shit she can have the next time she comes to town.

Of course you can’t even begin to tell that anything is different out in that garage right now.

The place is an absolute disaster at the moment from me digging through shit to get rid of.

But, as soon as I get my lazy ass out there and start getting stuff back up off the floor and start rearranging it, I should be able to notice a difference pretty quick.

Baby steps.

But I’m taking them.

I am determined to take some space back and get rid of shit like the above that has just been sitting and taking up room that at this point I am never going to get to to finish or am not going to use. Things that I am certainly not going to miss anytime soon.

Plus, now I have a good excuse to replace all that twenty year old Ryobi stuff.

There are other things I would like to get to but it has gotten so bad that I can’t even get through the joint, let alone actually do anything.

Here you thought it would never happen.

Even I have limits and like I said, it’s a Win Win for both of us.