Price over rates, in fact root for high rates, it speeds up the correction. Your cousin gets 6.5 and lets say 500k sales price for arguments sake. Rates go to 8%, he can’t sell for 500 any longer, nor can his neighbors, the high rates scare off the buyers because they drank the kool aid and think high rates=bad, low rates=good. Some people in his neighborhood need to sell due to divorce, transfer, death, job loss (life happens to a percentage of any street). They have an even harder time, prices go down further, people with arms cant refi, refi’s are dead, equity costs too much, foreclosures increase, prices decline further, lather, rinse, repeat. In a meltdown, stable rates stretch things out, rate increases cause arterial blood to flow.

Still feel the same fear of rising rates? They are actually your friend. They don’t always cause the immediate price declines with one exception, during repo driven market, which we are in. Scare off 70% of the buyers with record rates and watch what happens with all this “must sell” inventory, the best auction is the one where you are the only bidder.

There was a comment about getting property taxes reduced if values fall and that is true, you can appeal your tax valuation to the assessor. I believe there is a hitch, when values return, so does the original value even if the rise is higher than the amount permitted by prop 13 because you were given a temporary reduced value as opposed to someone who actually paid that lower amount. I could be wrong but that is my understanding of the valuation appeal having done it in the early/mid 1990’s, that was a alot of cabernet ago, so my memory is fuzzy.