Hot real estate market

[Stone]

I do not know where you live. But in Eastern MA where I live, real estate market is hot, hot, hot! Especially in some towns with good schools, people are buying real estate like crazy, I mean really crazy. There is definitely shortage of moderately priced homes. I saw a beaten up home listed close to $400K. The house condition is so bad that the seller does not allow for any kind of inspection, but the property is under agreement in less than 2 wks.

[dnoblett]

I have been actively looking to move south to Texas, and the housing market looks quite hot in the Dallas / Fort Worth area, and the prices are reasonable, nice homes in the $150K market in good parts of Arlington.

[NUWORLD]

Were not doing to bad here in NEO (North East Ohio)

 

The market has gotten much better within the past few years.

 

North east Ohio housing market

Edited May 2, 2014 by NUWORLD (see edit history)

[Dennis143]

The Los Angeles market continues to heat up. Our little bungalow was just appraised at $150K more than I bought it for in 2009. Thank you very much to Chinese who continue to come here pay cash for our "inexpensive" homes.

Edited May 2, 2014 by Dennis143 (see edit history)

[ama537621]

Even in NY the market is hot. We missed out on 2 houses that were listed and were under contract in a week. Hopefully our offer we made today goes thru. I doubt it though, A Chinese woman thru a fit and we put a low price in.

[credzba]

My wife and I were trying to buy a house in Austin, the market is very competitive.

One house we were looking at was listed at 300k.

The zillow estimate was 350k.

The house sold for over 360k.

 

Bidding on these houses is just crazy.

[tsap seui]

Our market hasn't risen much in home prices, maybe 5 to 6% in the last year, then again, that is all it ever did, realistically rise in price, unlike the big cities. People, ARE, overpaying for the fixer uppers so that market for guys like me who used to buy junk houses, restore them, and flip 'em is pretty much shot. But that's okay.

 

Builders got scared off when they couldn't sell houses a few years ago, and that makes current home prices rise..up to what you guys are seeing with bidding on homes and such....which....is what got us into the mess we found in 2005 and 2006 with home prices dropping like a hot potato.

 

Good luck with your real estate climbing like crazy, it is a good feeling, I know, but it's not something I'd bank on anymore. LOL As our country has well proven, what goes up, does come down.

 

Our little home in pastorial rural AMerica has only gone up 9 or 10 thousand since we bought it in 2011, two months after Wenyan and Fengqi got their pass to come live in America. That's okay, all we're looking to do is be able to sell in a reasonable time (instead of making a killing off it) should we decide to move to Altoona or Pittsburgh in the future, to be closer to the VA medical care.....it's all still the same beautiful mountains and scenic views.

 

We do half heartedly look at apartment investments from time to time but it's gotten to be real nice not to sit around hoping our real estate zooms up in price anymore. They were pretty heady days, everybody jumpin' for joy as their real estate (I'm talkin' about the DC area) went up a hundred thousand or more each year. But oh the drop, if you didn't sell it in time. I saw way too many friends, customers, and other folks lose BIG time because they didn't sell in time. We tried to get my dad to sell out down there years before the drop but he couldn't let go and thought it would always rise. He lived in his home over 40 years, happily he passed away before he had to see his home drop over $200,000 in a 6 month timeframe. Sad for many folks around the big cities who bought high, took another job, or got laid off, and needed to move, etc.....and lost their butts.

 

Great to see our economy so strong....good luck to all. You can still buy a very nice 1,500 to 2,000 sq.ft. home around these parts for $150,000 or slightly less (a mere downpayment in other areas)....LOL... Jes don't expect it to rise in price and make you a millionaire on paper anytime soon.

 

tsap seui

Out of the rat race

[Dennis143]

We bought our home at the peak of the market crash in 2009. It was a bank owned property. I was put through the wringer to get approved and that was with a decent down payment and a credit score of 840. Our property was reappraised from the recent refi that we did. And, once again, getting approved wasn’t such an easy endeavor like it once was. With credit so tight today, I seriously doubt that we’ll see a return to the housing bubble we had a few years back. Anyway, the appraisal was a very nice surprise.

 

It all boils down to supply and demand. We bought our home on the cheap (for LA) and its price has recovered to what the demand is for homes in this area. And believe me, homes here are way overpriced for what you get. A cracker box here would buy a mansion in many areas… maybe even a few mansions. We attribute it to our weather that’s ~78 degrees year round. LA’s like a woman with a killer body, but lacking a few marbles upstairs. She always gets by on her looks.

 

Yeah, not having planned for my retirement like I should have, I am quite pleased to see that at least my property value has gone up. Maybe I can afford to buy a craker box home outside California to retire in… and give up the constant 78 degrees and live out my life in air that’s so thick that it feels like someone’s thrown a hot, wet wool blanket over me.

[tsap seui]

Yep Dennis, that constant 78 degree weather is a big draw for many folks. I taught a few classes in LA, Fresno, San Diego, and San Francisco, and stayed in friends homes a few times before flying out to New Zealand and Australia. Nice weather and I liked the flora, and tile roofs....reminded me a bit of Australia.

 

I'm not much of a city person and I really like..... four seasons, especially when all four of them are mild. I guess that is how I got rooted here in Pa. I love the season changes...the green trees in summers, the song birds, squirrels, deer, the awesome beauty of spring and winter. The smells and weather of autumn...yada yada yada. I love all of the seasons and the distinct changes going into them. All of the winter scenes where you can see the boulder and gound on the mountains when the leaves are off, down to the winter wonderland postcard snow falls and how the early morning sun turns the eastern facing mountain ridges pink and red, or orange when the sun comes up and there is snow on the mountains. Everybody has got their own preferences and nothing is right or wrong.

 

It's nice to have found contentment in an area that the real estate is CHEAP. Like you said about other areas....here in Pa our home price wouldn't even make a down payment on a home in high dollar areas. That opens up so many more opportunities...instead of paying a ton of money for a home to live in, we can buy investment property that will pay for itself, the very roof over our head, plus put bucks in the bank for play or a rainy day, etc. All on a retirement income.

 

Why would you want to sell your place and go head with the retirement crowd to some place like Florida? That guy Jon Stewart said one night as he was talking about what was good about different states...."Florida....hmmmm. there are many roads leading out of Florida." Not to cut down Florida, I'm just not into places where the humidity is so high that I start to feel the stupidity of myself for sittin' in the humidity.

 

I got an eye opener and a good laugh once when I was visiting a friend in Murphy, NC. Murphy is up in the Smoky Mountains, on the NC, Georgia, Tennessee lines. My buddy said many folks retire to Florida, find it too hot, too, muggy, too rainy, and too buggy....many of them rebound from Florida and head up into the mountains of NC. I think the term they use is "rebounders". I can't imagine working all of my life in one extreme, and then moving to the opposite extreme and believing that is gonna be better. I can put on enough clothes to keep comfortable in the winter, I can't take off enough clothes to get comfortable in extreme heat. LOL

 

It is good to see peoples homes gaining the value they seek.

 

tsap seui

[Randy W]

Kind of a silly article here, but it does make some interesting points

 

Everyone Wants to Be a Homeowner. Why Not a Foodowner?

Imagine if we bought food the way we buy housing.

Instead of buying the food you need right now, you would buy a contract giving you rights to a stream of food in perpetuity. Say, a contract entitling you to five pounds of chicken breasts, delivered to you every week, forever. That’s basically what buying a home is: securing the use of a residence, indefinitely.

. . .

With this system, perverse things would begin to happen. Normally, consumers prefer that food prices be low. But this practice would create a large constituency of foodowners, who would benefit from rising food prices: If you bought your chicken contract for $20,000, and rising chicken prices pushed its value to $40,000, you’d have a nice windfall.

Foodowners would eagerly support government policies that restrict the production of food because that would push up prices. And they might reap windfalls from rising prices without selling their contracts: They could refinance, cashing out the equity in their appreciated food contracts to spend on caviar and crême brùlée contracts, or on nonfood items.

People might start buying contracts on food they don’t even want to eat in hopes of selling later at a profit. That might lead to a food bubble. And if food prices crashed, a lot of highly leveraged foodowners would end up in bankruptcy.

 

[Stone]

This economic recovery benefitted people who own stock (and stock funds) and people who own real estate, hurt people who saved money in the Bank, as inflation is pretty high if you look at food, utilities, medical costs, etc. For people who own homes, but want to relocate to other area, unless they move to a cheaper area, they will find other homes are getting more expensive and require larger down payment.