The Wife and I really would like to purchase a house this year. We have been putting nearly a grand each month for the last 3 years towards nothing. Both of our jobs are now over on the southwest side of town and our condo on the northeast side of town. This takes both of us roughly 30-45 minutes of commute to get there. We have looked at apartments and condos down there, but there is nothing worth moving to. There is a really nice community down there that have some very nice homes for some reasonable prices, I think.
We do not know anything on buying a home and have no idea where to start. The one thing we do know is that it is definitely a buyer’s market. Everyone seems to have an opinion on the market.
Global Insight, a Waltham company that crunches economic data, projected last week that housing prices would keep sliding well into 2009.
Daniel Mudd, chief executive of mortgage giant
Fannie Mae , said in a speech yesterday that prices likely would not begin to recover until 2010.And Robert Shiller, a Yale economist famous for forecasting the burst of the dot-com bubble, has warned this slide could last five years or more.
There are contrarians.
The chief economist for the National Association of Realtors said the real estate market already has hit bottom. The group projects prices to hold steady in 2008, and sales to increase slightly, before the market roars back in 2009.
The realtors association last year predicted that 2006 was the bottom for the real estate market, and that sales volume and prices both would rise in 2007. In fact, the trade group overestimated sales by 700,000 units, and prices dropped 2 percent.
pulled from: Forecasters: No quick end to housing ills
It is hard to say when the housing market will turn back around, but by the time we would sell a house if we got one this year would not be for 6-7 years. With us currently paying of our debt we would not have a down payment. No idea how much that will hurt us, but it seems everyone runs specials with no money down for first time home buyers.
For now we will keep paying of our debt and research this home buying process and hope that we will be able to. If anyone has any tips, suggestions, where to start, it would be a big help.