It’s a great time to be a buyer (well, in most areas)
Posted by admin under: Main Oct 31Sales of existing homes nationwide dropped for a fifth straight month while inventories rose to a 16-year high. According to this article in CNNMoney, “declining sales and growing problems in the mortgage market helped push home prices down for the 12th straight month.”
On a local level, based on my calculations, inventory is at a 4-5 year high. In my 7+ years in the business, I have never seen so many for sale and open house signs! I have a few clients that are waiting for the market to bottom out before buying, but in my opinion, that’s just too hard to pull off. The problem is that you never know until well after the downturn has already reversed course where you should have bought in.
The other trend I’m noticing is that the slowdown is primarily focused on starter homes and the middle market — most likely where subprime and ARM loans are heavily used. Although these homes are more susceptible to “lowballing”, I would caution applying that rule across the board for all homes.
Case in point: Cupertino, Los Gatos, Saratoga, etc. These premium markets still remain active and are bucking the statewide/nationwide trend. The bottom line is that you need to do your research on the area. This is where you really make your Realtor earn their worth! In this kind of market, there are definitely some great deals to be made!
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Wednesday, October 31st, 2007 at 11:35 pm and is filed under Main. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.