Average Home in USA costs R1.6million

NVDL: No wonder they have problems. Our average house prices (not including shacks) are one third that value, and remain overpriced.

I went to look at a house some months ago that was at the median level locally. It was the most ordinary looking box you'd ever seen. I was told: "It's worth R500 odd thousand." I said: "No to me. I wouldn't pay R300 for that."

Unfortunately, too many people went along with what they were told houses were worth. Tell me, would you buy a chocolate bar for R200? Then why buy a bunch of walls with something over the top spending hundreds of thousands more than its fair value? Stupid!

Something else I heard that isn't very clever, was a guy in real estate saying the current price swing is temporary because prtoperties will always function as a factor of the value of the property itself (land and building) and also location. He foreget to factor in that location in a world where it's harder to get around means location in the majority of cases (ie entire suburban areas and many urban areas) works against you. Sorry - is the argument here that prices will rise indefinitely or fall indefinitely?

clipped from news.yahoo.com "The NAR estimates that 35-to-40 percent of all sales are of distressed property, so underlying private activity is weaker than the headlines (imply) and there is little sign of imminent improvement," Ian Shepherdson, chief U.S. economist at High Frequency Economics. Prices of U.S. existing homes suffered a record drop in August and the rate of sales tumbled, offering little sign of improvement in the source of the financial crisis in the United States. The pace of existing home sales decreased 2.2 percent to an annual pace of 4.91 million units while the median national home price declined a record 9.5 percent to $203,100, the National Association of Realtors said on Wednesday.