I live in SD and I think it was about 6 years ago that I first came to this site. Never really looked at the forum much back then, but browsed main page articles as I was concerned about impending housing crash. (I had just put our house on sale for personal reasons). I really did not think this housing crisis would drag on forever like this… I was expecting crash in 2005, from all the web surfing.
Yet more people around me bought homes… I wished they talked with me before shopping, because paying $400/sqft for condo in SD does not make sense at all.
Then around the late summer last year, I had realized…
* my first child needs to settle on a school district
* 2nd child coming along and we had outgrown a 1 bed apartment I was renting
* all my CDs are making 0 to 1%… and Fed determined to keep the rates there
So I decided to join the dark side and went looking at redfin and sdlookup for 92131 – 92128 area. I was really surprised to find so many buyers and investors! Decent entry level homes in the area have multiple offers the same day – and on weekends you had to wait in line to view the houses! After many unsuccessful offers, I was almost going back to the rental properties when I finally got our offer accepted. This wasn’t the real deal (slightly less than $300/sqft), but it was in the nice neighborhood and, not a bad layout and in pretty good condition. Almost ready to move-in… and I figured, if the worst comes, I will be able to rent it out (presumably if the rent does not drop by 20% in SD)
It’s been few weeks since we moved – and now instead of surfing real estate blogs, now I spend more time visiting Home Depot or IKEA. I wonder if I made the right choice, or if I became the ultimate knife catcher after all these years – but my kid loves his new room and I figure some things money definitely can buy.
And since it’s done, I think I’ll be coming here less often, if not never. Thank you for all who contribute to this site, especially the owner. I wonder at his passion to the topic of housing and all those graphs and charts. I also wonder how many here have actually bought in 2009 or 2010, and whether the only people left in this forum would be the RE professionals or permanent renters. Maybe the traffic to this website could be a barometer for housing recovery – when we truly achieve housing recovery, no one would be here.
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