The Best Time to Buy Real Estate is Now!
If your neighborhood is similar to that of most Americans, you may see more homes for sale signs now than any time in recent history. Due to overly aggressive marketing tactics of the mortgage industry (wink, wink), many people were over extended in their borrowing and got in trouble with paying their mortgage.
This lead to lots of short sales, foreclosures and homeowners anxious to sell their homes.
The problem is that the news media is scaring potential homeowners from buying a home in a time when the best opportunities are all around you. In every town on the Central Coast prices have come down significantly, creating some very good opportunity.
The mortgage industry crises as the media has termed it has created an abundance of motivated sellers which is why the time to get into real estate is now. If you are a first time home buyer (defined as not owning property in the last three years), the federal tax credit of $8000. adds to the benefits of buying now.
If you are afraid that housing values will fall you should not be too concerned as long as you are not trying to “flip” the property immediately. Long term investment in real estate is where we are now. Short term drops is by no means an indication of the long term real estate market trend, which has been up up and up.
If you would look at a 1 year graph of home values it would seem that this is the worst investment and only a fool would be buying a house now.
I prefer to look at the long term graph of about a 30 year span. Investment returns with that timespan look very good. Homes values have been steadily and consistently climbing over a 30 year period, and in this period there were some bumps along the way but the trend is still solid.
So instead of panicking you should be looking for the best opportunities around you. You can basically cherry pick the real gems. If you are thinking about buying a single family house or an investment property, this is your time to buy.
One of the richest man in the world once gave this gem of advice, "Buy when everyone gets out and sell some when everyone gets in". You can not let the news media dictate your outlook on the market. For some reason, bad news sells, worse news sells better!
If you have been thinking about buying a home or an investment property there may never come a better time than now! Even if you are just curious about a certain market segment, give me a call and let’s take a look.