How I beat the bubble: Confessions of a market-timer
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Excellent piece of pre-weekend reading: LA Times real estate reporter Peter Hong’s story of how he bailed out of the housing bubble in 2005. It starts off like this:
‘Our friends said we were crazy. Relatives asked whether we were in financial trouble. But in April 2005, my wife and I bailed out of the American dream. We sold our two-bedroom Pasadena condominium and became renters again.
‘We got nearly three times what we had paid for the place nine years earlier. It seemed to us like a staggering profit -- and a sign that the market had been pumped up beyond reason.
‘That’s why we decided to rent instead of buying another house right away. We wanted a place with a yard and a third bedroom, but we weren’t willing to pay the sky-high price or take out an exotic mortgage to buy something our income did not justify.’
Your thoughts? Comments? Insights? Keep it polite for once in your life. E-mail story tips to peter.viles@latimes.com.