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Old 04-02-2010, 12:31 AM
 
Location: Vladivostok Russia
1,229 posts, read 857,351 times
Reputation: 608

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Quote:
Originally Posted by manderly6 View Post
I have a friend who has been waiting for the right time to buy for about 7 years now. In the beginning he didn't want to buy when prices were going up and now he doesn't want to buy when prices are going down.

Heh....The world is full of folks like this----always waiting for that perfect moment in time. The trouble is, it passes them by and they never figure it out.

Anyways.....I agree with the poster above about picking bottoms.


PS - I know a guy that goes to the gym I workout at with the same dilema,only it surrounds women. He's 39, never been married and doesn't have a girlfriend. He's waiting for that perfect moment also....
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Old 04-02-2010, 06:01 AM
 
5,458 posts, read 6,703,426 times
Reputation: 1814
Quote:
Originally Posted by JohnG72 View Post
The notion that you will miss the bottom is insane. Buying housing in the few year window that is within 5% of the bottom one way or the other is just fine.

Its not like housing is gonna bottom and then shoot back up to 2006.
Yep, agree.

Plus, it's not like declaring bankruptcy and being foreclosed on because you bought an overpriced house just to get out of renting won't crimp your style. Renting has had tangible financial benefits for many people during the last bubble.
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Old 04-02-2010, 06:14 AM
 
4,921 posts, read 7,674,723 times
Reputation: 5482
It seems from these posts the the real question is; have we hit bottom yet? I have read experts stating real estate is going to lose another 15% this year. Still another expert says we will hit bottom in 2014. I firmly believe that a real estate rebound is directly tied to the job market and until we see UE figures decreasing I doubt there will be any rebound.
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Old 04-02-2010, 06:24 AM
 
Location: NJ
17,574 posts, read 46,063,218 times
Reputation: 16273
Quote:
Originally Posted by KCfromNC View Post
Yep, agree.

Plus, it's not like declaring bankruptcy and being foreclosed on because you bought an overpriced house just to get out of renting won't crimp your style. Renting has had tangible financial benefits for many people during the last bubble.
How exactly is buying a house not at the "bottom" going to cause someone to declare bankruptcy?
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Old 04-02-2010, 06:27 AM
 
Location: Massachusetts
422 posts, read 1,471,682 times
Reputation: 299
i'm almost ready to make an offer. towards the end of april.

there's really no way to know when's the lowest of the low or highest of the high. if it's low enough for you....that's almost as good as it's gonna get!

in my opinion...the downside risk is already on the low side...if you can afford to hold for at least 5 years in good and bad times...i think you are quite safe.

of course the prices might drop somemore....but the drops aren't gonna be very substantial. just make sure you find a house with good attributes at a fair price.

for those people who always seem to be waiting and waiting and waiting for THE RIGHT TIME....they are always gonna be stuck in the same place. it's like waiting for your MISS/MR RIGHT....there'll always be someone better in this world....do you keep waiting for the PERFECT/BEST one to come along?

so while i think it's possible to time the buying/selling of properties....it's not possible to expect to buy at the absolute low and sell at the absolute high. as long as you buy/sell within the right price movements/range...then you are good.

one shouldn't be too greedy or too fearful when it comes to investments. nothing yields a risk free return!
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Old 04-02-2010, 07:16 AM
 
Location: Columbia, MD
553 posts, read 1,703,869 times
Reputation: 400
Right...folks need to keep in mind a declining RE market and rising prices are not mutually exclusive.

If you look at homes in real dollars, then really, how can they drop much further without some sort of catastrophic deflationary event? Do people really think if a home has fallen 50-60% from its peak, and if that home is still overpriced, it will just keep falling in price?

The more likely scenario, JMO, is RE does continue to weaken. We haven't seen the bottom, but we have in prices. Inflation is coming soon, at the earliest this summer and at the latest this fall. Actually, it'll be stagflation like we saw in the 1970s. This is baked already...there's no avoiding it...it's a consequence of the money printing/insane increase in the money supply by the Fed.

If the dollar loses roughly 3-5% of its value each year for the next 3 years, then prices can stay flat or even go a bit higher yet be much less expensive in 3 years. This is what people need to watch for. This is clearly the goal of the TPTB - debase our currency to make our liabilities easy to pay off. This is why we're not in the same trouble as a country like Greece, who's bound to the Euro and can't debase their way out of their mess.

The argument to buy now and the argument to wait are equally valid, but will depend on individual situations.

Here's the checklist for buying now:

1. Are you buying with at least 10% down?
2. Will your mortgage be no more than 2x your gross household income?
3. Do you feel secure with your career/job and are you willing to stay in your house for the next decade?
4. Would a mortgage interest rate 2-4% higher than current market rates make the home unaffordable for you?

If all of the above are true, no reason to wait to buy.

Keep in mind, right now, there are really no safe ways to invest or spend your money except physical gold and silver, and in agriculture. RE has not become more attractive, everything else has just become much less attractive and risky.

If you wait to buy a home, you may be avoiding downside risk in the RE market, but you're also taking a risk the value of your savings will be stolen by the government as inflation/stagflation take root and your dollars are worth less. Equities are a joke right now, and bonds are in a bubble that will burst spectacularly soon (even Bill Gross from PIMCO says so). It's actually also possible the same are true of metals, but the risk is just a lot less than the others.

Also JMO, the real risk with buying a home right now is the possibility you'll need to sell due to some life change, and find the market is frozen. Or that your neighborhood was abandoned. Or that your municipality has become much less secure b/c of cutbacks for services like trash/police/education/fire while your taxes skyrocket. Affordability doesn't seem to be the problem right now.
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Old 04-02-2010, 07:21 AM
 
2,729 posts, read 5,189,685 times
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In our neck of the woods it APPEAR to be good time to buy and just did that a few months back. Here is the logic I followed:

1) Price have come down significantly and I could afford to buy that dream house and hold the supposed slight (or more) down turn from now on.

2) Just in my area the average rent price a tad over what I pay in mortgage + insurrance (both flood and hazzard) + property tax. Same for the zip code. Now, why should I rent then?

3) According to my research the majority of people bought at ridiculoulesly high price in 2003 to 2007 that I figured that there is no way those people would unload for a huge loss. Unless, of cources, they have to and that's short sale and foreclosure (about 50% of the market now is short sale or foreclosure but only about 5% of the houses are on sale, which is good sign) which is happening now. Many people are holding back because of their expectation of housing value

With simple demand and supply logic, if the unemployment rate doesn't go up big time, I don't see a significant price decline in MY area.
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Old 04-02-2010, 12:50 PM
 
355 posts, read 1,477,224 times
Reputation: 355
Yeah, it's really a fantastic time to buy right now. Here are just a few factors that I believe will drive prices down further, at least here in Cali:

1) Unemployment and Underemployment - no need to explain as even the official numbers as bogus as they are, are horrible
2) Federal Government's ending of tax credits and subsidized low interest rates (at least for now)
3) Large overhang of unsold inventory. (Listed and various forms of Shadow inventory)
4) Alt-A and Option ARM recasts from 2010 - 2012
5) Increasing default rates for Prime Mortgages
6) Record Notice of Defaults (NODs)
7) Increase of foreclosures
8) Increase of negative equity - at least 20% of ALL mortgages in US, fully 1 in 5, underwater
9) Rising interest rates
10) Commercial Real Estate Bust in 2009-2013
11) Renting option being half the cost (or less) of a mortgage
12) California budget problems
13 ) Tightening of credit from banks
14) Future bailout of FHA and FHA loan foreclosures
15) Lack of move-up buyers

The list goes on and on and on etc...

Hell, with all of the government and big bank intervention - historically low rates, buyer incentives/tax credits, artificially manipulated low inventory etc., the RE market should be shooting to the moon. Yet it's barely able to maintain current prices flat. The RE market is a wreck and with all this enormous government stimulus it's flatlined.
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Old 04-02-2010, 01:15 PM
 
3,322 posts, read 7,950,350 times
Reputation: 2852
I can only speak for where I live but the market here is starting to rebound. For example, the area where I purchased my home has gone up 10k since November. My mom is a real estate agent. Says the amount I could afford, when she inputs that with the area I want, nothing comes up. I think the market here has hit its bottom and will recover next year. I sincerly think the worst for personal real estate is at its end as commerical real estate becomes a mess this year.
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Old 04-02-2010, 01:45 PM
 
634 posts, read 1,161,452 times
Reputation: 1206
Quote:
Originally Posted by donsabi View Post
The tax credit ends and I read that interest rates are expected to rise in the second half of 2010. At the same time apartment rentals have dropped $40/month over the past six months. I would like to know what others who can afford to wait are thinking.
The government and Fed are propping up the market mainly through the Fed's 1.25 trillion purchase program of mortgage backed securities which supposedly ended April 1st. Now we get to see if the market can stand on its own and if there is any private appetite for such securities with poor yield.
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