Question for all of you soooooo desperate to buy a house right now. (Los Angeles: real estate, neighborhood)

[JohnG72]

What prompts this question is the huge number of posts asking about purchasing homes in Los Angeles area or worse yet moving to VERY far away outlying areas like Lancracker, Fontucky, Rivertucky, MV, and high desert.

One of the things that caused the later part of the huge housing run up in 2004-2006 in Los Angeles was a horribly misguided sentiment of "oh I will never be able to afford to buy a house if I do not buy now". I even have a co-worker who mumbled those exact words and paid $560K for a house in 2006 that a few months later he told me had lost $30K in equity already, and by now has probably dropped in price by 60%.

LOL.

So my question to those so eager right now to purchase a house, no matter where, no matter what price...heck you haven't even really researched the market and price and neighborhood....how many of you are just completely panicked out of your mind that prices will never ever be this low again and will start rising rapidly again and you will never ever ever be able to afford a house in Los Angeles if you do not buy right this instant?

[Lovehound]

I'm hoping to sell my Northridge house perhaps later this year or early next year. I'll be happy to help out one of those eager buyers.

[SOON2BNSURPRISE]

When to buy a home in Los Angeles

Take a look at this thread that I posted not too long ago.

[bhcompy]

i want to buy a house because ive been planning on it for years and this year there are major incentives to purchase(such as 8k from the fed). i dont believe prices are going to suffer much more in the areas i wish to purchase

[Mardala]

Its not a bad market to buy. There are plenty of REO's if you can get a hold of one. Interest rates are low. Doesn't mean you have to rush out and buy this second, but its not a bad market to look into buying. No one should rush and buy in any market.

The market in Los Angeles is hard to compare against other markets around the US. Home prices generally are falling all over, but for instance in many parts of West LA the prices are flat from what they were in 2006. And although the prices are lower, they are nearing, imo, where the prices would be at if there was a normal rate of growth. E.g. you will see lots of homes listed in the low 300's around central LA, but now are in the high 100's or low 200's. Note this is around most parts of LA, but as I just stated there are plenty of places where the prices are not going down at all.

And no I don't believe it was the sentiment that one needs to buy that drove the housing price bubble. That was just an affect of it set into peoples minds.

[bradd]

did you just say lancracker???????? ha ha ha ha ha ha

seems to me that distance from everything is a big part of it. when prices start to mellow, those furthest from where you want to be in the city (in this case, the LA basin, westside/downtown) lose the biggest.

thought is: why move forty five minutes away to valencia, now that i can afford to be in silverlake (just an example, on the distance). this sentiment continues through, and pretty soon valencia gets a lot cheaper...

until people can no longer afford silverlake (again, just an example). then they start to go outside of silverlake, and eventually get pushed back to valencia.

and so it goes, on and on, up and down. on average, historically, every 10-12 years they say, but the last cycle took like 16 years (so its not exact, i guess).

so lancraker, the "909", etc. should be getting killed right now, because you can afford to be closer because things have come down...so why go there?

so if you buy there, expect that there wont be a rush to want to buy what you bought, until people cannot live closer, at an affordable price. just the theory, makes sense though.

thats what they taught me in college (real estate finance undergrad), and then in my practice (as a broker) i saw the same thing. seems pretty logical (always a bit oversimplified though)

[looking2reloc]

For me, the reason I'm starting to look is because of the "seemingly" low prices, [with the thought that the prices are still going to come down maybe 10-20% next year], and because the interest rates are low, plus the $8K incentive. I realize that it hasn't bottomed out yet, but if I plan to live there permanently, then it's a no-brainer, because it will still go up. Maybe not in the next 3 years, but probably in 10 years or so. During the peak years, no, I never thought that I should buy because "I'll never be able to afford a house". What goes up must come down and what goes down goes back up. That's the universal reality.

[Fontucky]

Fontucky? Where's that?

[compSciGuy]

Originally Posted by Fontucky

Fontucky? Where's that?

Fontana?

[Fontucky]

Originally Posted by compSciGuy

Fontana?

Duh. Look at my screen name.