Buy now? Or shall I wait for Prices to Decline?

As a Realtor, I’m often asked that question and it frustrates me to hear otherwise rational people talking about home ownership the way a speculator might talk about the price of gold.  Nobody needs gold, but everyone needs a place to live.

If you’ve found the house you love, you intend to make it your home for the long haul, and the financials add up, why would you wait?

Trying to time the housing bottom is as much folly as trying to time stocks or any other investment vehicle.  In fact, it’s greater folly because if housing prices do fall further, it’s likely to be because mortgage rates are rising, which would mean that over the long term that slightly lower price you may have paid could end up costing more in carrying costs than you saved.  Furthermore, how much lower could prices go?  The economy can’t get much worse than it’s been in the past three years and the difficulty in getting a mortgage couldn’t be much greater.