I guess technically, there is a national housing market. You could group together any variety of products and call it a market. The stock market, for example, tracks a huge variety of stocks. Stock prices are also effected by a combination of national and “local” factors. The stock market has done very well over the last 2 years. NEW was a stock. So does that mean it did well too?
The real question is how does the national housing market effect your decision to buy a property. The answer is generally “not much”. The main factors in deciding whether a property is a good purchase are the local factors. If you find a property in a growing city where high paying jobs are moving in, you can put 5% down, rent it out, and get a positive cash flow after all your expenses … what’s wrong with that?
bigmoneysalsa gave an example of choosing between Seattle and Boston. If Seattle becomes too expensive and Boston is cheap, then (all other things being equal), people will leave Seattle and move to Boston. The key is that for the people in Seattle, its a bad time to buy a house, while for the people in Boston, its a great time to buy a house.
cow_tipping believes that prices will go down everywhere (on every property in every town in every state). That’s a bold prediction. Personally, I don’t believe it. But I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.
If you listen to what the long haired dude was saying, its that there are places where you can get good buys and places where you can’t. He searches the country for good areas and invests in them. So in his case, the time to buy is now, IF he finds the right property for the right price.
This is the type of “debate” we see a lot of on TV where none of it is very informative. One guy is arguing “buy” and the other guy is arguing “don’t buy”. But one guy is talking about Texas and the other guy is talking about California so they’re not really talking about the same thing. If the moderator were any good, he would focus the debate on specific markets (e.g. real estate in Austin). That little news segment only served to confuse rather than to inform.
