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Comment by overhang | Hacker News Reader

Were you around a few years back to see real estate values drop from $300K to $25K? I saw that. And we are talking about a physical property.

$25K is not zero, but it would be hard to distinguish the effective difference if you're leveraged $250K.

So, as with any investment, if you're spending monopoly money on cryptocurrencies, scoff away. But if your retirement depends on it...

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Are they still worth $25k? Or are they now back until to being over $300k?

You still have a house to live in, no matter what it's worth. I've never thought you should see a house as an investment, and 2008 proved that.

I don't have monopoly money in crypto, in fact I just cashed enough out to put a downpayment on a house just yesterday (fortuitous timing), but I understand how volatile the market is and I only invest what I can afford to lose.

Honestly if crypto did lose 95% of it's value overnight, I'd still keep on buying, and just wait until the market recovered. I don't want that to happen, I'd love for it to go up forever without ever dropping, but I understand that's not a reasonable idea, especially after sitting through the last two major Bitcoin crashes.

> You still have a house to live in, no matter what it's worth.

Maybe. If you actually own the house, sure. But many people had a mortgage, lost their jobs, and they couldn't afford the mortgage any longer. Additionally you can borrow against the value of your house. But since that house was practically worthless, they couldn't borrow to get through the job loss.

$300k to $25K? That seems awfully cheap. Where did prices drop so much?

Condo towers in Miami that were being put up and finished as the crash arrived, were often entirely empty and couldn't find any buyers. You could buy cheaper units for $30k to $50k. It was common to see 50%-70% haircuts, drops from $180k to $90k etc. Over six years (2003-2009), Miami added 23,000 condo units for a city of 400k. In Dec 2008, nearly half of those remained unsold.

Las Vegas saw some similar action. It suffered the worst overall top to bottom crash of any major city in the US.

Atlanta, and the surrounding suburbs and exurbs, saw significant drops like this as well in many neighborhoods and cities. Same with the Jacksonville, FL area.

Detroit. And they haven't yet recovered. Real estate has negative worth in some places because the legal obligations to raze the site imply costs greater than what the lot and "improvements" are worth.

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