What goes up ...

• Author: Parr, Howard
• Position: Letters - Letter to the Editor

Thank you for Benjamin Wallace-Wells' article ("There Goes the Neighborhood," April), concerning the likelihood of an impending real-estate plunge. My wife and I saw this type of run-up firsthand in the stock market and real-estate market while living in Seattle in the late 1990s, and all you heard, from the workplace to every restaurant, were cries of, "Get in while you still can, because it's only going up!"

We now live in Sacramento, where the housing prices have tripled over the past four years. We are trying to buy a townhouse--not easily done here, even with a household income that exceeds $100,000 per year. People continue to pay astronomical prices for homes that they would have scoffed at several years ago for being too small, too dated, or just plain ugly.

Everyone is pushing us to consider interest-only loans and ARM's, just as they have used in order to get the biggest house they can. We would not entertain either option ... not in this climate. We are expecting a huge drop in housing prices, though very few people seem to agree. "There's just too much demand," they keep saying; I respond, "Don't you mean too much enticement?" People are living in the ether, and economic realities will eventually straighten this situation out, and we expect it will be soon. And painful.

Howard & Gina Parr

Sacramento, Calif.

I live with my husband and our seven children in the greater Seattle area. Although we are thankful that we own our small home, we have long been priced out of the real estate market for a move to a larger home. We have been puzzled as to why the...