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[Doughal]

As a first home buyer: If you want to buy a single family home, would you buy now, or would you wait(& for how long)? How much longer until the bubble has sufficiently deflated - especially in Metro Washington DC(DC, MD, VA), before buying a house?

[curney13]

it is buyers market. there are many good deals on houses now,as many are being foreclosed.be sure to watch the small print in the loan agreement.high interest and interest only loans will kill you.also make sure interest rate is low and fixed -not variable.the chfa program can get you a house with no money down also.   CollectiveSoul's Recommendations 10 Secrets to Successful Home Buying and Selling: Using Your Housing Psychology to Make Smarter Decisions Amazon List Price: $17.95 Used from: $8.00 Average Customer Rating: 5.0 out of 5(based on 7 reviews) CollectiveSoul 81 months ago Please sign in to give a compliment. Please verify your account to give a compliment. Please sign in to send a message. Please verify your account to send a message.

[Culann]

You can read all the experts? opinions online, but I found none had ever given me a definite answer.   Some people have gone through the real estate slow-down in the early 90s can tell you that such a low should last quite a few years, and I tend to agree with them.   Prices might have come down a little bit, but it is not quite enough.   The reason is that interest rate is still quite low. But again, you might want to take advantage of low rate too. Usually price comes down but rate increased at the same time, some way in the middle there is a combined lowest cost to buy a house.   But you have to be so lucky to have that moment - almost impossible to pick.   These are some of my suggestions for you to make a decision:   if you have to have a house now due to family issues, also plan to live in the house for more than 5 years, plus you can find a relatively more reasonable neighborhood, and your monthly morgage will not be more than 1/3 of your pre-tax income, you can consider buying now. otherwise, wait a bit more.   If you need a good school district, your choices of location will be limited, unfortunately.   My guess in the market is that this price-decreasing trend will last no less than 1.5 years. But this is just my feeling. DC area should be similar to NYC, where I live.   Sorry that I have not mentioned any experts? opinions here, but I hope my personal experience will help.

[Garton]

Washington is, and has been for sometime, an over inflated market. I think if it were me I'd hold off for now and wait to see if the correction spreading across the nation will reach the capital as well. Who would say to buy now? Mortgage Brokers, Bankers, other Real Estate Agents, and anyone else who derives their income form the real estate market. What else would you expect them to say? Banks happily loaned whatever amount borrowers wanted as long as the banks could then sell the loan, pushing the risk onto Fannie Mae(ultimately taxpayers) or onto buyers of mortgage backed securities. Now that it has become clear that a trillion dollars in mortgage loans will not be repaid, Fannie Mae is under pressure not to buy risky loans and investors do not want mortgage backed securities. This means that the money available for mortgages is falling, and house prices will keep falling, probably for 5 years or more. A return to traditional lending standards will mean a return to traditional prices, which are far below current prices. While normally a house/property would appreciate say 5 - 6% a year, currently they are doing just the opposite, housing values are remaining stagnant or in many cases the values are actually depreciating 5% to an unbelievable 40% in some markets.  House prices do not even have to fall to cause big losses. The cost of selling a house is 6%. On a $300,000 house, that's $18,000 lost even if prices just stay flat. So a 4% decline in housing prices bankrupts all those with 10% equity or less. Another thing to keep in mind is that Baby boomers retiring. There are 77 million Americans born between1946-1964. One-third has zero retirement savings. The oldest are 61. The only cash they have is equity in a house, so they will most likely be a glut of baby boomer houses hitting the market in the next few years. Add to that the HUGE glut of empty housing(at least in my market). Builders are being forced to drop prices even faster than owners. They overbuilt and have huge excess inventory that they cannot sell at current prices. Well that?s my two cents worth. I?ve sold houses to people that were convinced they could afford that ?dream home? only too have them calling me in a panic that they cannot keep up on rising interest rates on their adjustable rate loan. Some have had to sell at lower prices than they bought forcing the mortgage company to take the hit on the loss. If your mortgage company refuses to take the hit or the hit is to large, guess what your stuck. If it were me I would wait another few years keeping a close eye on your market.