Here’s another sign that the air is coming out of housing bubble 2.0.
Existing home sales fell 10.3% year-on-year in December. Sales, including single-family houses, townhouses, condos, and co-ops, dropped to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 4.99 million homes, according to the National Association of Realtors. This ranks as the biggest year-over-year drop since May 2011 — in the midst of Housing Bust 1.0.
The SchiffGold Friday Gold Wrap podcast combines a succinct summary of the week’s precious metals news coupled with thoughtful analysis. You can subscribe to the podcast on iTunes.
Peter Schiff put it pretty bluntly in a podcast last week. We don’t have a booming economy. We have bubbles. And it looks like the air is starting to come out of some of those bubbles. We see signs of trouble, particularly in interest rate-sensitive sectors such as real estate. As just one example, home sales in California have hit the lowest level in a decade. And it’s not just California. We’re seeing declines in many of the “most splendid housing bubbles” in America. Even more troubling is that we’re seeing these tremors and interest rates aren’t historically high.
Yet.
But they are rising quickly. According to an article in Wolf Street, they may soon hit 6% and that could be the real tipping point.
If you have the choice between an investment with low risk and a high potential for return, or an investment with high risk and a low potential for return, which would you take?
The answer seems obvious, right? You want to take on the lowest risk possible while getting the best potential for a good rate of return.
Well, if you factor risk levels into your investment calculation, buying silver looks like a good bet right now – especially when compared to stocks and real estate.
