Current housing surge vs. last decade's housing surge

The no-income-no-asset, payment option ARM type loans are nowhere to be found. Jumbo/Alt-A lending is thriving but crazy loans like the Non-Owner-Occupied 80% LTV from places like Lehman simply don't exist any longer.

There was a time where Wells would underwrite you with a simple written rental agreement and consider it income as a part of refinancing and income documentation. They would not ever call to verify, ask for stubs from rent, etc.

4506's from the IRS used to be requested, instead of 4506-T's. Much much different. Folks could use stated income loans and qualify for 100% financing with verification they held an hourly wage on a simple call to their employer. No provision of their checkstub. With a 580 credit score.

We live in a different lending universe today.

The credit is much harder to come by and at least in my area, its a supply issue. Supply is very low and good houses don't stay on the market more than a week or 2

For one there is alot more liquidity in the market place.

WARNING your about to get a long opinion of Houston market place.

in houston there are alot of outside investors/corporations buying houses in cash. a few years ago a few select realtors were hired by companies to buy any house thet met a set of guidelines(3/2/1800 square foot/etc.) realtors would put it under contract without consulting the buyer. Supply has sucked for a while.

now I heard that the investors are slowly working to divest their holdings. Supply will increase soon.

The Heights is booming and it should be. But everytime I drive around there I continue to see vast open lots ripe for development. Yeah builders are trying to control the prices. but supply will catch up. this is just me but the idea of selling a 5 to 10 year old townhome that is surrunded by brand new ones does not sound too appealing to me right now. I know sometime soon I willneed to make that jump, but I am ok with taking my time and seeing what takes place in the marketplace over the next 6-10 months. I have a great deal on rent so I know im not throwing away much money.

In houston I am too skeptical of the housing price surge to buy anything. I dont think a bubble will pop as there are plenty of jobs, but i do think it will deflate a bit. Supply will catch up to demand and the hiring spree made by oil and gas will slow a bit/move more employees around the state.

I have some friends selling their townhouse in midtown. Priced to what the levels have been in the early part of the year, and they are not getting contract offers in less than a week that others were getting. i think its starting to slow down.

Houston is also very sprawling... I hear rumors of companies like SHell buying the Strack propoerty just north of the Woodlands. Plan is potentially to build a campus there, much like Exxon. If that happens then The Woodlands will continue to explode.

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Personally, I think we are in another bubble. Thankfully my market isn't really phased by the good or the bad too much. We don't get the crazy swings in value (good or bad).

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Pretty insulated here in middle TN as well, but we are seeing a slow down in the high end market here (500k and up). Under 500k is still snooze and lose.

The older agents say that this is more in line with traditional markets from 10 years ago, where the spring market meant something because June-August always had lulls.

To the OP, lending is much tighter than before the crash. There is a lot of cheap money, but it is much tougher to get.

IMO prices reaching all time highs isn't necessarily alarming, as housing prices have steadily increased (generally) over the last century. The prices during the housing bubble were artificially high due to absurd lending practices (encouraged by the gov't) and corrupt banking (also encouraged by the gov't).

Although prices may be creeping up again with the low interest rate environment, if you look at a graph of historical housing prices, they are much more aligned today with the historical uptrend. It's not nearly as "bubblish" as it was 6 years ago.

I don't know how the high end is doing in NOVA and honestly I don't know how to define the high end here.

My neighbor sold in 1 day with 3 offers in early May. Our neighborhood is under a million so it's definitely not high end for this area.

Housing starts are currently less than half of what they were at the peak. Multi family construction is moving the needle now, tougher lending standards pushing people away from single family units

I'm not in the industry anymore (i used to be a mortgage wholesaler).
I don't think credit score/history requirements are that strict right now.
I don't think the reserve/asset requirements are that strict right now (there are still gift programs for 100% loans).

But the income requirements are absolutely tougher.

Ability to pay is much more important than a desire to pay. During the downturn, 700 and 800+ credit scores were foreclosing. It is one of the side effects of large scale unemployment.

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Personally, I think we are in another bubble.

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Its totally possible we are in another bubble. Cheap interest rates make homes more affordable, especially with rents going crazy in a few spots.

I live in Denver, and about 18 months ago, it became cheaper to buy than to rent (my calculation). And rents are continuing to go up. We were renting and our landlord jacked ours up three times in less than 18 months. When we started looking outside, we discovered we actually had a great deal on our rental, we should have been paying $2000/month (ours was $1575). So we bought.

The thing is the housing market isn't booming everywhere, and the markets that I know are doing well either bottomed (orlando), have always been strong (san fran) or didn't go completely crazy (denver, seattle).

I am definitely nervous we are in a bubble, but with the growth denver and seattle have seen maybe its justified.