David Stiff Quotations

The problem with migration numbers is they come out too late.

I'd be most concerned in places where housing affordability is an issue because the effects of rising interest rates are even more pronounced.

There is huge demand for waterfront homes. Right now, if you look at the Florida coast, the Jersey shore you see second-home buying driving appreciation.

The demand for apartments may come from a different group of people. After the dot-com crash in Boston, rents started falling because unemployment rose faster among a group of people that was more inclined to rent.

We considered this trend to be unsustainable because so many households were already priced out of the Bay Area market and the prospects for the local economy were not good, so we adjusted the forecast to 7.5 percent.

The zips that did the best were right in the city or in the outlying areas. People are being pushed into the inner city or out toward the suburbs.

The risk is much less in a city like Des Moines. You're much more likely to sell a house at a higher price than what you paid.

These economies are doing well and weathered the recession well. And in Miami and L.A. the housing booms happened later than other parts of the country.

Zip codes in vacation areas seem to be doing well. It follows the anecdotal evidence I've heard about vacation home buying.

It's so hard to time the real estate market. You should see all the spreadsheets.

I've given up trying to guess where interest rates will go.

Things have also been slowing down a little in Boston.

In Boston, all of these zip codes are far from downtown. They are former mill towns that are having a resurgence in price because they're so affordable.

In cheaper markets interest rates probably won't matter as much as the local economy. These are places where new supply matches new demand, and you just have steady appreciation.

If your goal is to find a place to live, don't worry about timing.