Boy, will you get a thousand replies to your post…I’ll try to be first, because everybody else following will disagree with me, so it’s better that I start.
My view: I think it’s entirely possible that home prices won’t decrease by much, but there are substantial risks that they will. You may believe that home prices 5 years from now will be the same, or 5% down, or 50% down, or any percentage you like. You may even entertain the possibility that they will move slightly up, say 5%. In any case, unless you believe that they will SHARPLY go up (and nobody in their right mind believes that today), it is still better to rent than to buy, because carrying costs are higher when buying (which is historically abnormal, as it is usually cheaper to buy than rent).
So it’s all about risk, in my view. Today, the risk of being burned by the downside is higher than the risk of missing out on the upside, so waiting out is probably best.
