Christopher Thornberg Quotations

We're in a housing-driven economy from top to bottom at this point in time.

There are some signs that the housing party is ending.

Let's put it this way: We will be in a fragile economy.

Building 200,000 new residences per year, not to mention the current interest in fixing up existing homes in order to spend new housing equity as fast as possible, will tend to drive this (employment).

That could smooth out the cycle, so to speak. But when you add it all up, it's unclear.

We have lots of new employees. It's just not showing up in the employment statistics.

We as a nation are not as oil dependant as we were back then.

We've never seen this size of a housing bubble before, so in a sense we're in kind of a strange place right now.

We say it's a bubble, but a housing bubble does not pop like a stock market bubble, ... A stock market bubble, when it pops, lots of market activity, prices dropping rapidly. Housing prices don't drop that way because there's a huge fixed cost. You don't day-trade your home.

You got to think that this thing is going to end, eventually, one way or another. Prices have gotten to the point that, even with all the crazy financing out there, people still can't get into the market. It's just that over the top.

When consumers realize they can no longer expect that appreciation bonus to subsidize their consumption habits, they will very likely pull back on spending.

Things are still hot, but the trend is clear. The only debate now is how hard a landing there will be and what will it mean for the general economy.

Prices people pay today will be about the same in 2011, maybe 2012.

This is a real-estate-driven economy from top to bottom.

It's an irrationally behaving market. It's very difficult to figure out where it is going to go.

It's pretty rare for home prices to fall unless you lose a lot of jobs in the local area. What you're really looking at is prices going flat for six or seven years while the fundamentals catch up.

It's people building houses, ... It's people financing the building of houses. It's people working in the stores that are furnishing those houses, and of course, the real estate agents who are making this all happen.

It's such a contentious issue that nobody wants to deal with it.

It's business delayed, not business canceled. They make people aware of what's going on, but it doesn't cause any economic impact. It's a pain in the butt, but they get their point across.

California in 2005 did better than we thought. But my feeling is the employment picture in 2006 is not going to be as good as 2005.

By the middle of the year, the cooling real estate market will take a bite out of employment growth everywhere. The question is, can other sectors of the economy pick up the slack? That is a big mystery right now.

Housing prices are going up because the wealthy want to live along the coast. That's who's driving prices up.

The forecast for California is mediocre at best; at worst we are liable to dip into another recession, ... at least 50% if not more.

The markets are starting to cool, and everyone says we may be sliding down the backside of a hill.