Not much to report, but inventory in my screen scrape is still increasing even though total inventory in Folsom and El Dorado Hills is not. Prices are dropping, which accounts for some of the inventory increase....part new listings starting out at lower prices, and part old listings dropping into our range.
We have seen some nice looking homes in our price range lately...and are very encouraged. Might have to get a new letter from our mortgage broker so we can start shopping in two months (one month into our 6 month lease already. Conceivably in two more months we could make an offer to close escrow in 2 months, giving us a whole month to tidy up the new place and move in).
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13 comments:
Why are you in such a rush now? Do you really think the market is going to turn in 2-5 months, preventing you from moving? (We are in a similar position to you, also looking carefully in Folsom.)
I'm sure that great properties will continue to open up in your areas of interest, and better deals are still on their way. I do agree with you that the price and quality available have become much more encouraging lately!
Best of luck to you!
EJ
Maybe it makes sense up there but not here. Still nothing in Yolo and in our price range.
Our rent in our Streng in Davis is 1100. I couldn't touch anything like it for under 2500 mo piti and that home would be in Woodland, not Davis. That's a huge difference since we commute on our bikes.
So spend 13k a year to rent and yet we are able to save $21,000 a year. I make 8k a year renting plus compound interest vs. holding an asset that's declining in value.
Taxes won't make up for that difference especially itemization won't gain us anything really.
I'll wait for the bottom.
I am in similar situation. My lease runs out in couple months and I decided not to renew for another year. Will be going month to month but LL does not plan to sell so it should be ok.
I am seeing large price drops but more importantly faster rate of drops (you should see Elk Grove area, they are dropping like a rock although Gold River is still not dropping much)
Although it probably won't hit the bottom price for another 2 years, I don't have to look for the exact bottom (as with stock market, finding the exact bottom is nearly impossible) as long as we are close enough to bottom, I will buy. I am thinking early spring next year. I am looking for about early 2002 pricing.
To clarify our thinking - we will begin to look with intent, next year. We look on MLS now, all the time, but not seriously at this point.
Next spring, if the PERFECT home became available, we'd move immediately if it was priced around correct for the whole market (within 10%). However, we can't find the perfect house...! Our want/need wish list doesn't quite fit what's available in Folsom, so there will be compromises made in the end.
That gets me to the point - if we are compromising, we can be much more patient and wait for an excellent deal.
EJ
ps: We aren't renting, but we have no problem taking any hit in our current home and moving anyway. We could buy and make our payments on both properties indefinitely. Our eyes are wide open and our means are such that it doesn't matter. (We are under 18% of gross for PITI now.) :)
If it were up to me, I would be happy to wait up to 2 more years to find our perfect house (that's when my daugher will start school). But hubby is just itching to get into a place.
Similiar to EJ's thinking, right now we would buy if we found a custom house in good condition priced close 2002-2003 levels. But if its just a normal tract home, I prefer to wait.
In otherwords, if there is something unique about a house or location and we won't necessarily find it later on, then I will jump in. Otherwise, there is no reason not to wait for a better deal to come along (as long as I can restrain my hubby....he has started talking comromise and buy now...then rent it out once we find our dream home in 3-4 years).
Same here,
We rent for 1250 and save at least 1200 per month for a house. We have seen nicer houses popping up in our range, but none that make us feel we have to jump now.
Hell, eventually we may be able to pay cash for a house. Our down payment is already going to be more than we paid for our first house in 1995.
We don't see any positive trends in prices, we're comfy and can find same/better rentals easily. I'm in no hurry.
With two kids in daycare our downpayment grows very very slowly (about $400 a month including interest). But its still a hell of a lot more than we used last time we purchased($0).
I'm in the "down payment growing slowly" category as well.
I consider myself very fortunate to have sold my condo when I did, and to have paid off all my credit card debt, which in my case was mostly school books and classes and kid-related expenses during the time I was going to school. It left me with very little equity from the condo, but I absolutely can't complain as I went into it with zero down.
IF all the cards fell just right and it was possible for me to get the house I wanted for about 250K, I'd do it.
We just signed a 6-month lease extension today, which will put us to the end of March. We're confident that not much new (in our area) is going to come on the market during that period, and asking prices can only come down.
Like others here, we are tracking a few "possibles" but haven't seen anything that would be perfect - at least not in our range. But I'm seeing properties that might be very good if they were 100K cheaper -which could happen, especially if some kind of sellers' panic were to happen.
Of interest today: heavy (panic?) discounting by the home builder Hovnanian. Some TV pundits are saying other builders will have to follow.
From what I've been seeing a decent home in good areas were priced:
2006: $500,000
2007: $400,000
2008: $300,000
2009: $200,000??
I am fairly confident 2008 prediction will come true but not sure about 2009.
I've been trying to log on to K.Hovnanian's web site for the last 2 days with only limited success. I wanted to check out whether they were offering price cuts in addition to the free complete furnishings and picking up closing costs.
Cmyst,
I finally got in late last night. They still have the old list prices shown. They want you to go there to get the info.
The only builder that updates discounts that I've found is KB. centex sure doesn't. They want you to come in so the sales people can work on you. Needless to say any repsect I had for Centex has been lost in the last year.
That's what I figured, too. I can only get into the first couple screens of their website, but even under their "deal" screen they don't tell you what the deal really is.
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