I am in between… Breeze as much as it pains me to admit it I do agree with alot of what you say. Also it is not just the government backstopping the mortgage industry, what happens to the 3M jobs that will be created when the government stops the spigot on that? That could also really be a nice second wave of unemployment couldn’t it?

Okay so I dont want to sidetrack and I sure don’t want to get into a political discussion with the Breeze.

Anyways, the pessimist in me is always strong. Very strong. I cannot help but to imagine tough times for the next 2 years with high unemployment. I try to envision the economic future, especially with regards to housing and it keeps coming out with either 1 of 2 scenarios. The first choice is a Japan like situation of the 90’s. That is characterized by a continuation of the secular cycle we are in and then a flat line situation with very little appreciation for a few more years after. A second scenario is a market that is more volatile. It continues down in a secular manner but has smaller rallies in it where each rally is induced by some artificial stimuli provided by the government. In both cases I think we see large skews in markets based on desireability and quality of home.

What confounds me is the inflation cycle. At some point when the economy does start to pick up, I just fail to see how we stave off interest rate explosiveness. This to me could be the catalyst to whipsaw housing right as it is starting to recover. How could it not do that right? Those who have ALOT of cash will be in the catbirds seat. However even in that scenario, if you think home prices will plummet in a manner of weeks or months you are wrong. They will chunk down but it will take another year or two or more. It will depend on our politburo, I mean government or whatever entity runs the country at that time.

We have touched on this a few times. In the face of an inflation tsunami is it better to have a 4 or 5% mortgage with a home ownership lifestyle? I don’t know.

All in all I don’t subscribe to the You have to be an idiot to buy theory. However in no way does that invalidate all of the arguments put forth. In short I AGREE WITH THEM. By the same token we have seen some people who have bought that are not idiots, at least not in my book. They have posted here and some of them continue to post here. All in all none of them seemed to indicate that they bought because they thought the market was going to make a quick recovery. The common theme in thier reasoning seemed to be lifestyle driven.

Breeze don’t take this as a cheerleading post to buy because it is not. I haven’t made any other offers to buy since the one I made last July. Mostly because I haven’t found anything I like but also because of a possible transition out of state as I see the erosion of California having a larger impact then I thought it would on my family.

All I know is that it is a tough choice for buyers and a personal choice for buyers. Lots of different factors. For me it has been to hold off.