12:21 March 2010.
A few things: First, it will inevitably happen several months later, so The Real End will be Oct 2010. But again, later, so March 2011. A few months after that.
Why?
Well, first of all, besides the fact that I AM ALWAYS EARLY, AND from Case-Schiller data & anecdotal observation, RE seems to move in big waves. Most macro-economic events seem to. It's our reactions that are hyper-magnified.
So here is The Biggie of the week, Case Schiller:
Case Schiller, April 2008CS comes out on the last Tuesday of the month, with a 2 month lag. CS is considered the least "biased" measure of home price movements, as it uses sale pairs for the same house, with various adjustments & exclusions for excessive rehabbing & such.
So why am I even coming out with a call For The End? Well, it appears that things have maxed out their "stretch" on the downside. Before I explain, here's a graph that shows the YoY gains/losses in Case Schiller from inception:
CS, YoY gains/lossesNow, if you look close, you can see that Jul 2006 was The Top of The US Mega-Housing-Bubble. That was also a little ahead of when YoY returns sunk to 0%.
YoY returns actually maxed out June 2004 - Oct 2004, when they were +20%.
You can see from the top graph THAT was a pretty damn good time to own a home, or RE of any kind probably.
YoY returns finally hit 0% in Dec 2006. Nationwide that was probably past the prime. In Bend, where IQ's & the housing market are 18 months behind the times, that was STILL a pretty decent market. Things had slowed, but you could still actually sell, given sufficient incentives.
So in a shorter term sense, the housing bubble began in the Summer 2002. It hit it's max gain inflection point 2 years later. It was rising at it's fastest rate at that time. It finally peaked 2 years after that, in July 2006.
Conversely, we are now almost exactly 2 years off the top. We are also approaching a point of max pain, down 16% YoY. But the growth of max pain may be slowing here. That might imply that the downturn is half over. That means a July 2010 bottom for the housing bust.
Again, in