Newsgroup: it.economia.investire
Titolo: Abitazioni - non è mia abitudine citare alla lettera e non condivido appieno... ma vista la fonte... mi sembra interessante

What Happens If Real Estate Goes Bust
The Wall Street Journal Online
By Greg Ip
Five years ago, the bull market for stocks came crashing to a halt after a 
glorious run. Now, many worry that the roaring housing market may be headed 
for a train wreck as well.
What's the likelihood this could happen? For his part, Federal Reserve 
chairman Alan Greenspan said last week that a nationwide housing bubble was 
improbable, while warning of "froth in some local markets." He said a broad 
price decline in the housing market was unlikely to happen or to have much 
economic impact.
While house prices aren't likely to deflate as quickly as a hot Internet 
stock during the dot-com bust, the consequences have the potential to be far 
more devastating.
Here's how the stock and housing booms look similar -- but differ in several 
important respects.
The key difference is that stocks are purely financial investments. You can 
sell a stock on a whim, and you don't have to run out and buy another. By 
contrast, people live in houses, and if they sell they have to move -- which 
is both costly and time-consuming.
"How could you have a housing crash?" asks Ted Aronson, managing partner at 
Aronson Johnson Ortiz, a Philadelphia money manager. "We all just sell our 
houses and move into a trailer park?"
Houses are also much more expensive to sell. Mr. Greenspan says commission 
and other transaction costs approach 10% of the price of a home. By 
contrast, Mr. Aronson says big institutions typically incur transaction 
costs of 1% to 2% on their stock purchases.
The cost of moving is why homes change hands much less than stocks. Sales of 
new and existing homes in the U.S. in 2003 were equal to about 6% of total 
housing units in the U.S. By contrast, annual turnover on the New York Stock 
Exchange is about 100% of all shares outstanding. A home normally sits on 
the market for several weeks before selling; a stock usually sells in 
seconds.
Stocks also move as a single market more than houses do because they are 
subject to many of the same influences and often are bought and sold as part 
of a broad portfolio. Houses are more subject to local influences. Stocks 
can also be sold "short" by people who don't own them, or via derivatives. 
You can't bet on declining housing prices the same way. That means when 
houses appear overvalued, it's harder for contrarians to nudge them the 
other way.
SCM
ibridge.ch
 


wrote:
[deleted]
Di per se il contenuto e' interessante, anche se non mi sembra dica
nulla di nuovo.
E' ovvio che una "bolla" sulle abitazioni e' di tipo diverso di una su
prodotti finanziari, pero' se le azioni sono facili da comprare e da
vendere, una casa ha ben altri problemi.
Una volta comprata, e fatto un mutuo, poi e' la banca che per una
quindicina di anni ti tiene al guinzaglio, se poi fai parte di un
consorzio di costruttori e costruisci case (dalle mie parti hanno
recentemente costruito parecchie zone nuove), magari ti va bene, ma se
il prezzo e' giudicato troppo alto e la casarimane invenduta, sono
cavoli amarissimi.
Su entrambi i casi ho visto con i miei occhi diversi esempi, che mi
hanno convinto a valutare mooolto attentamente il mattone come
investimento.