"I had no idea that would end up being the peak," he said in the telephone interview. "No one knew back then. It was basically luck."
Kiesel sold his last home after concluding that excess construction by homebuilders and easy lending standards set the stage for a crash.
"Housing is the next Nasdaq bubble," he said in a June 2006 interview with Bloomberg, a month before U.S. home prices reached their peak, according to the S&P/Case-Shiller index of values in 20 U.S. cities. "It's not just houses that will be for sale. You're going to see financial assets for sale over time, and ultimately corporate bonds."
As recently as December, Kiesel said he would hold off buying because he expected prices to keep falling through 2013.
Unemployment Declines
The U.S. unemployment rate in April was 8.1 percent, down from 8.5 percent in December. Lenders have begun to loosen the reins on credit as bank balance sheets have improved, a trend that will boost investment throughout the economy, Kiesel said.
The U.S. manufacturing, technology, chemical, automotive and energy industries have recovered to the point that they're driving housing demand in states including Texas and North Dakota, Kiesel said. In such cities as Miami and Phoenix, home prices have fallen so much that foreign buyers seeking bargains have bought enough property to start a price recovery, he said.
Phoenix's median price rose 13 percent in March from a year earlier amid a shrinking supply of foreclosures and other homes priced at less than $100,000, DataQuick, a San Diego-based real estate research company, reported today.
In Kiesel's case, buying became more attractive after the owner of the residence he was leasing wanted to raise his rent 10 percent, he said.
"I remember balking at that," he said. "Basically, landlords finally have pricing power."