Myito,
It’s ok that you are buying now, and as SD Realtor said there are always people willing to buy at any time in the market cycle. As for the statement that those “on the sidelines will remain on the sidelines in the future”, I can tell you (at least in my case) you could not be more wrong. Since you revealed some insight into your assets, I will as well. We are now renting, but could easily buy a higher-end home in CV for cash. Yet, I am absolutely convinced this is the wrong time to buy (at least for us). All the indicators I’m following are practically screaming this. I know what it is like to buy at the WRONG time first hand. We bought our first home in Carlsbad literally on the day the market supposedly peaked back in 1989! And then turned around and sold in 1993 for what at the time for us was a horrible gut-wrenching loss. While we made up that loss in spades on our 2nd home, the pain of that earlier experience is still, how should I put it…, very poignant. In my opinion, based on everything I am looking at: i.e foreclosure sales, NOD’s, exsiting homes sales, permits, mortgage rates, Case-Shiller Index, etc. this time around looks to be worse than the previous housing crash. I am hoping to avoid making the same mistake twice. When the indicators solidly swing their momentum back to the positive, we WILL buy. But why expose oneself to such risk at this time? It’s not like the market is going to run away from you to the upside. It’s clearly not going back into the double-digit appreciation mode any time soon, so it doesn’t really hurt to wait and see how it develops when the odds favor continued decline. I do understand that urge to own, but am hoping that this time around, by focusing on the data we can take the emotion out of the decision. Good luck to you on your purchase.
