How are people waiving appraisals unless they are cash buyers?

FHA and VA buyers have mandatory inspections.

This is the kind of stuff that causes the housing market to crash. There has to be a check and balance on properties and loans. I guess people have forgotten the Obama years. The market was depressed by foreclosures and loans being very difficult to get.

We bought at last house in 2001. Houses were moving fast. when the market "crashed" in 2007-8, we still could have sold our house for more than what we bought it. Sure, not as much of a profit, but still with equity.

Rode it out, refinanced. Waited and sold at a good time when our development started. Don't think you ever really lose on a house unless the areas around you go to hell for some reason.

They can't really go down, so it seems like at some point they'll go up. But I'll be happy if they don't.

Living in an expensive market, one of my concerns has been the impact of changes to mortgage interest deductions: https://www.nerdwallet.com/blog/mort...est-deduction/ It seems like this would hurt home values at the higher end of the spectrum in the long run. But I'm not seeing it right now.

Holy crap at all of that.
You could have bought the Brady Bunch House.

It is called Foreclosure. There will be a Lot of them in the coming years when all the free money dries up and hyperinflation fully kicks in.

When I bought my house 25 years ago, I stood on the front porch and noticed a sign up on the corner. "What does it mean that we're in a historic district?" I asked my Realtor.

It was sheer luck, but it's awesome. There's notable redevelopment to our west and our southeast, but nothing can change in our neighborhood. So we get the benefits of development in terms of services and property values, and we have no risk of someone wanting to plunk a high-rise down on our block. Plus, the development is eliminating single-family homes in favor of multi-family, which decreases the supply of houses like mine.

This is the rub. You only come out ahead if you leave the market or if what you’re selling isn’t your primary residence. Thus the investors and flippers.

Inspections. Not appraisals.

Negative interest rates are a real thing. There is talk that we very well may be headed into that situation. When that situation has raised in the past banks generally charge a person a percentage rate, beyond their monthly account rate if they have one, for the amount of money that a person has in their account.

He stated Both in his post. ;)

had a voice mail saying they were looking to buy my house. It was just a spam call. Never gave any specifics.

People are dropping $1+ million dollars cash all over Los Angeles, without inspections and without appraisals because the interest rates are so cheap that investors can put a couple hundred thousand into them and rent them out for $6k-8k per month all day long.

Anyone there doing teardowns?

I think that interest rates will "rise" at some point but it won't be to levels that we saw around the year 2000, in which they're 6%-9%.

I'd be surprised if they even reach 4% before the end of the decade because it would leave millions homeless and without the ability to own a home.

All over, although it's generally in the pricier areas like Beverly Hills or the Birds in which enormously wealthy people buy two to three lots and build one house in its place.

That said, it's also happening quite a bit down in Inglewood near the new Rams stadium and that area, which has become Silicon Beach. 20-30 years ago, you could buy a house down there for next to nothing and now it's going for $1,000 a square foot or more.

But the main thing is people buying older homes built in the 50's-80's, tearing them down to stud and building them back up. In most cases, the plumbing and electrical is no where near code so you're better off tearing out the old plaster and starting from scratch, although those fixer uppers are generally $800k-$1 million.