Wednesday, January 21, 2009

Mook Day

The Mookie is tonight, after pwning Pvan in Monday's NYRPS I feel it is again time to issue a "Rue the Day Schaubs" warning.

I saw a classic theonion piece via reddit.com. So sad when over the top satire looks prescient.

We are 24 hours into this Obama Presidency, I am not seeing change yet! I met up with a former co-worker for beer (and to compare jobs in Valley notes) and met another EE who is long time Valley resident. He was trying to convince us that NOW is the best time to buy a home. Most laughable part of his argument was that he could not afford to sell his current house to move into a bigger home due to Property Taxes nor did it make sense to sell his home and downsize now that kids have moved out because he would only be pulling couple $100k of equity profit but his propert taxes would climb. I looked at movoto this morning out of curiosity, I love that $800k is asking price for a "single family home" with ~12 feet of open space to next door neighbors wall and a pipestem driveway AND parking is so hard to find that the picture advertising house has a SUV parked two wheels over curb to allow passage.

It has long been the american dream to own home to protect against rising prices but I don't see how current financial mess ends until housing prices do drop to levels ~4x local household income.

Locally I can rent a house for ~2x the property taxes would be to buy same house. At those levels I am not sure if 0% interest on 30 year loan motivates me to purchase.

2 comments:

corron10 said...

and you are in a pricey part of the country...

I looking right now with the wifey to buy... I do think its a good time to buy a home, if you have 20% to put down. I think it would be even better a 6-12 months down the road.

People are taking well below 10-15% from their asking price.

Hammer Player a.k.a Hoyazo said...

It is basically a foregone conclusion that home prices continue to drop for another 6-12 months at an absolute minimum. Only question is whether prices start to pick up in a year, or more like 3-4 years.