Murrietta California. Buy Now?

[tashina]

Originally Posted by kturbe

The current market in your area is a great buyer's market

It's like Name That Tune. It only took me 11 words to figure out that the post was from a real estate agent.
(After I read the post, I looked around and saw that it said real estate agent under the username.)

[Steve M]

This is one of the top 3 questions I get as a realtor. For one thing prices have dropped all over, Murrieta and Temecula are nice places to live and renting a pad surely can not hurt your chances of buying a property in the near future - get a short term lease and just get on a realtors email list for the type of house you want, you'll soon see what prices are doing.

I know you don't want to overpay for a property, but you find the perfect house you like and are planning on stay for 7+ years almost anytime is good to buy.

Originally Posted by Vizcaya

Thanks for the reply. I am looking for homes that are about 2000 sq ft. I have found a few for around $380-400K, they are becoming more available lately.

I just have a feeling the market will drop another 10% before it recovers.

[Tool Shed]

Prices are coming down quite a bit more, inventory is pilling up, and loans are harder to qualify for, rates are also slowly moving up, even though they are historically low. Temecula/Murrieta is a high risk area due to lack of high paying jobs. If fuel goes up sharply in the next few years, it will further hurt the area. I just had a chance to buy a house that sold for $550k about 6 months ago for about $360, and passed because I expect the housing to crash much further.

Incomes and rents haven't gone up nearly like home prices.
These are the things that you can compare against housing. There are still plenty of rentals. There are beginning to be more and more layoffs as well. Many people that work here are in RE, lending, or construction, or in RE related businesses. These people are and will lose jobs in the next 2 years as the MEGA housing boom ends. This will put even more homes on the market.

My advice, if you HAVE to live here, rent, then buy in a few years.... no, housing won't "bottom" later this year or in 2008, as some would like you to believe. It will be closer to 2010. If you research previous housing busts, you will see that it usually takes about 4-6 years to reach bottom, and this one is following the largest and longest housing boom ever, should take at least that long.

Good luck.

[davidt1]

Good points, Tool Shed. We are not even near the bottom yet. There is no hurry no buy now unless you want see your house goes down in value after you bought it. Here is an interesting video predicting future home prices. See if you can spot the real estate shills.


YouTube - Real Estate Predictions 2007

[Vizcaya]

Well after a couple months of renting, and looking at over 100 homes from Temecula to Riverside , we put a lowball offer on a bank owned.

We now are in a great area in Riverside(Orangecrest). Great Schools, great house with a huge yard, pool, and i am only 10 minutes from work. we are planning on being here until after my son graduates college about 10-12 years.

I am now waiting for this market to bottom out, so I can purchase a rental property near UCR.

[evolutionrules]

We've been thinking of doing the same in Temecula. How low did you go? How did they respond? I figure the banks are going to want to unload some of these hoses especially since there seems to be more every day. Any info or advice would be great.

[jvazjr]

Prices will continue to drop in the IE. No sense buying now even if you can afford it. Why pay 400k for same home that will soon be 320. That 80 k could go a long way in your retirement funds or kids college.

[Vizcaya]

I agree that prices will come down furthur. If you are renting right now, then at least wait till the end of summer to jump into this market.

When I placed a bid on the house I ended up purchasing, the bank had listed the property at 500k, then lowered it to 450k. I came in with a offer of 420k. The bank(Country Wide) was just starting to shows signs that they may be in trouble, and I believe they accepted the offer instead of holding out for a better offer.

My calculations at the time(Aug 2007), told me that this market will bottom at about 30% off of peak, and thats when I was going to jump back into buying. Therefore the house I bid on sold at peak for $565k in July of 2005. I came in at 420k, which is about 25% off peak.

Knowing what I know now, I believe there will be a 30%-%35 drop from peak, before we see bottom. Therefore I may "lose" about 50k of equity.

Banks are looking at all offers. If you really need to get into a home now, and you have found your dream home, put in a offer thats about 30-35% from peak. Right now homes are selling at about 25% from peak.

[Al123]

Home prices will continue to drop throughout 2008 and just "might possibly" hit bottom by mid-late 2009 or early 2010, at the end of the rate adjustments cycle. If you can just wait it out, you will save yourself a fortune on buying a California home.

[evolutionrules]

If they are already selling at $100/ sq ft do you really think they will drop to $75 or $50 / sq ft? Because houses in Murrieta/Temecula are SELLING when they hit $100/sq ft. People are buying them. I'm not sure it's going much lower. Inventory is actually down from late 2007 in Temecula. Not by much granted but it's not going up either. It was almost 1500 houses in October/November and it's less than 1400 now (assuming the figures from ziprealty are correct). I'm sure more and more houses will foreclose but as long as people are buying them then prices will not continue to drop past the point that they are being bought at. I don't think anyway. I'm no expert. And they have stopped building new houses. Once the houses are gone that are in production I'm not too sure they are going to roll out any new developments for a few years at least.