Gary Watts… Where’s the Inversion?
Chuck Ponzi October 26th, 2006
In July of this year, Gary Watts, discredited Orange County real estate agent who sells his prognostications to local agents and runs a series of talking events masquerading as a “real estate economist”, told us that we would definitely for sure, without question, unequivocally, have a roaring second half of the year. Or, as he referred to it; an “Inverted Year“.
This was after the widely anticipated “Superbowl Bounce” which never materialized.
This was also after the widely anticipated “Spring Bounce” which never materialized.
This was also after the widely anticipated “June Bounce” which never materialized.
and… you knew this was coming…
This was also after the widely anticipated “Summer Bounce” which never materialized.
Which begs the question? Where’s the bounce?
Let’s look at the Stats:
Let’s look at Gary’s Prediction that he issued after 6 months of the year of abysmal performance:
The buyers normally begin entering the market in February and stay strong through June. However, this year is . . . INVERTED! The latter half will be more active.
And, we can’t forget his prices prognostication:
It’s been an absolute miserable six months in terms of real estate…I think we probably are not going to see 15 (percent), but I think 11 or 12 (percent) is still realistic.
The California Association of Realtors tells us what’s happening in sales in September:
Southern California Sales Change:
Los Angeles: DOWN 31.2%
Ventura: DOWN 38.8%
Orange County: DOWN 32.2%
San Diego: DOWN 31.7%
That’s all fine and dandy, but prices are still going up, right?
Southern California Median Price YOY change:
Los Angeles: UP 4.4%
Ventura: UP .6%
Orange County DOWN .3%
San Diego: DOWN 3.0%
Not quite holding up to the 10-12% up, huh Gary? I guess there’s still 2 more months before the year ends that we can make fun of your silly predictions. I’d suggest basing your predictions on more than hopin’ and wishin’. Maybe some affordability stats will help?
VenCo is 3.1% down so far y-o-y versus Gary Watts’ 17% in the bag (total) increase as predicted . The median is $615k so following Gary “The Pied Piper” Watts would have cost you $150,000 so far.
You’re getting the numbers from Dataquick, right?
There is always a disconnect since the CAR uses a different dataset than DQ. Nevertheless, it’s not happy time in 2006 like the Real Estate Industry promised us.
Maybe we can get a class action lawyer to start up a suit of 2006 buyers who were misled by Gary… put ImpactRE out of biz.
It’s always healthy to put a little fear into people of esteem making those kinds of unfounded predictions.
It should be clear to anyone reading this that Gary Watt’s “predictions” are merely self serving advertisments. Each one is designed to minimize poeple’s fear so that the RE people can keep this sinking ship afloat.
Sink already, the free ride is over.
I am hoping the the CA AG will nail him for his published recommendations that agents collude by taking signage down and selling one property at a time per street.
Which Attorney General? The one who is about to be elected?
Somehow, I don’t think that real estate is currently on either candidate’s radar, and as for Jerry Brown, I wouldn’t begin to speculate on what he’ll do when real estate comes up, because on similar decisions in the past (when he was Gov), his reactions have not been precisely what one would call predictable.
I know nothing about Poochigian’s views on the matter.
Tuesday, November 28, 2006
O.C. house prices fall for third month
The California Association of Realtors reported that the median price of a single-family home here was down 2.9 percent in October.
By JEFF COLLINS
The Orange County Register
The median price of an existing single-family house in Orange County fell from last year’s level for the third month in a row, the California Association of Realtors reported today.
The association reported that the midpoint of all O.C. house sales last month was $681,340, compared to $701,520 in October 2005.
That’s a decrease of 2.9 percent, and follows year-over-year price drops in August and September.
Sales continued their slide too, falling 21.4 percent from October 2005 levels, according to the association’s monthly index.
This was the county’s second home-price report for October. Earlier, DataQuick Information Systems reported that the median price of a single-family home was $665,000, or the same as it was in October 2005.
O.C. Register above
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Note: Dataquick appears outdated.
They need a new formula. My opinion.
The Naysayers of Gary Watts have to look back over the 2002 thru 2005 predicitions from Gary. He predicted significant increases each year and was very close even when other “Experts” were saying Bubble burst, major losses, etc. He was correct. So if he got 2006 wrong deal with it. My guess is that the unexpected enery prices had much to do with it, but he missed the target this year, why not beat up the others who made people miss the major upswings from 2002 thru 2005?
People easily forget to look at the rest of the story.
Anon,
You’re fooling yourself, much like Gary Watts, that there were people screaming don’t buy in 2002 and 2003. Most bubble discussions didn’t even start until 2004-2005. At which point, we were clearly in a bubble, and we will likely see prices below those amounts barring a dollar crunch.
I have heard Gary claim that people were professing bubble back in 2002 and 2003. I’ve never seen any MAINSTREAM discussions until 2005.
Sure, you can find all kinds of nutjobs screaming about the end of the world since about the time of Adam… it hasn’t happened in more than 6000 years, but there’s still nutjobs screaming about it.
The problem is that the housing market is opaque. There is no public scoreboard for the market for housing, with clear bid and ask and sale prices. In the stock market, you can easily look and see what any stock is trading for, so you know what its derivatives (options) should be trading for. Not so in the housing market.
[...] Machine (August 2006) Gary Watts… Ignorant Optimist or Deluded Sociopath? (October 2006) Gary Watts… Where’s the Inversion? (October 2006) Watts, Old Scoundrel, At it Again (February 2007) Who’s The Fanatic Now? (June [...]