In the last couple of weeks I have seen an increase in agents bring contracts to the table. I myself have written a few too. So the question everyone out there needs to ask themselves is where do you want to be. Buying at a slightly higher than the bottom prices or miss the bottom and start trying to buy when the market is correcting to a normal market? Tough question, I think an easier question is what are your goals? If you are thinking about buying what is the end result of the purchase. Let's think about that for a second.
Quick turn around? That is a tough one in today's market.
Buy and sell in a year? possible but the market is still a little volital.
Buy and hold or rent for 3-5 years. That is where I think the best chance for profit is right now.
That leads to the next question.
What to buy?
Multi-family is getting very reachable for a lot of buyers. FHA loans are availible if you are willing to live in a unit of the multi-plex. Land is getting really reasonable now. Fixer-ups are hot and that keeps price higher than they should be. Then there is the foreclosure and pre-foreclosure markets. Highly competitive right now.
So what are your goals?
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If you're looking at real estate strictly from an investement point of view, I think you'll have to hold for longer than 3-5 years. My prediction (for Southern California anyway) is we'll see the bottom in 2009-2010. Then a period of about 12-18 months before we see significant appreciation.