James Chanos Quotes

House prices have risen by nearly 25 percent over the past two years. Although speculative activity has increased in some areas, at a national level these price increases largely reflect strong economic fundamentals.

London changes because of money. It's real estate. If they can build some offices or expensive apartments they will, it's money that changes everything in a city.

Land values are going up a lot in Sydney, but it's feasible to build because prices are going up, too.

But 300 million Americans, their lending institutions, their government, their media, all believed that house prices were going to go up consistently. And that got billed into a $20 trillion residential home market. Lending was done based on it, and everybody did a lot of foolish things.

Home purchases that are very highly leveraged or unaffordable subject the borrower and lender to a great deal of risk. Moreover, even in a strong economy, unforeseen life events and risks in local real estate markets make highly leveraged borrowers vulnerable.

I made a tremendous amount of money on real estate. I'll take real estate rather than go to Wall Street and get 2.8 percent. Forget about it.

The financial crisis of 2008 was not caused by investment banks betting against the housing market in 2007. It was caused by the fact that too few investors - including all of the big investment banks - bet too heavily on the housing market in the years before 2007.

Money in property is dead money. It doesn't help the country. It's funny how the U.K., Ireland and Spain are the most property-obsessed nations in Europe and yet are also the ones suffering the most.

It is time to move on. House prices won't rise and the economy won't fully engage until more distressed properties are resolved and put back into ordinary use.

And so the danger for the housing industry is if we see interest rates rise.

I put all my eggs in one basket and invested in property. I didn't do anything internationally - it was all in Ireland.

I believe that the Chinese people as a whole love to make investments in real estate.

Housing has led our nation's economic expansion over the past few years, accounting for 16 percent of our Gross Domestic Product. New housing starts and home sales hit record levels from 2003 through 2005.

Our economy isn't going to recover until the housing market finds its footing.

People should buy a house to live in, not as an investment. Property has become such a national obsession - it was the primary subject at dinner parties and how many television shows were dedicated to the market. It's not good for the economy.

By the late 1980s people realized that houses did not always appreciate and that they could fluctuate like any other market commodity.

In 2008, when the real estate market blew up, it principally hurt older people who saw the value of their houses go down, along with their pension plans.

Speculation, in its broadest sense, is not an evil in itself, but the contrary, and relieves public distress far oftener than it creates it.

We just went through the biggest housing bubble in history and now housing prices are starting to go up again. I don’t know what to make of that.

People aren't as impressed by homes anymore after they saw how they collapsed in price with the financial crisis.

I think it's hard for anyone to get into real estate or Hollywood.

In the 1930s, there was a stretch where you could borrow more against the real estate than you could sell it for. I think that's what's going on in today's private-equity world.

From the moment a New Yorker is confronted with almost any large city of Europe, it is impossible for him to pretend to himself that his own city is anything other than an unscrupulous real-estate speculation

Ask any real estate broker to name the three most important factors in buying a property, and he'll say: "Location, location, location." Now ask him to name the chief justice of the United States Supreme Court, and he'll say: "Location, location, location." This tells us that we should not necessarily be paying a whole lot of attention to real estate brokers.

With housing it's something even more dramatic than that, because most people aspire to own their own home.If you really think that houses prices are going to go up next year and the year after, you feel if I don't buy it this year, I'm going to have to buy it next year.That's not true of an Internet stock. But it's true of a home.