jan_andrea: (wow)
Jan Heirtzler ([personal profile] jan_andrea) wrote2007-06-25 02:20 pm

Hurray! We've (inadvertently) been doing the right thing!

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=11361676

Audio isn't available until about 6 eastern, but this is immensely reassuring. It's been a seller's market since 1995, with humongous runups in price, and the guest (Dean Baker) says that in areas where that's the case (like, for example, Seacoast NH), it's perfectly wise not to buy now (or for the last 6-10 years). He recommends waiting longer until prices are lower still -- and he does expect the bubble to shrink even more than it has -- and that's exactly what we were planning. As far as the equity issue goes, he makes the point that if you buy at $300k and then the market falls by 10% over the 5-7 years you've owned, you haven't gained any equity -- in fact, factoring in all the fees, etc., you've actually lost equity. That makes me feel a WHOLE lot better about having rented for the last 7 years. We're planning to start looking on a serious basis (not just looking vaguely at listings) in Dec/Jan, so that we can move out of here as close to the end of our lease as possible (since the landlord, a lawyer, has a thousand little fees in the lease if you break it early), and it sounds like that's probably the way to go. So, yay!

[identity profile] brunahildm.livejournal.com 2007-06-25 06:40 pm (UTC)(link)
We were dumb! But I don't regret it, because I love living on my own little patch of land with no shared walls :)

[identity profile] jan-andrea.livejournal.com 2007-06-25 08:02 pm (UTC)(link)
I don't think you guys were dumb -- you really needed a bigger place, and no asshole neighbors :) Until about 6 months ago, anything bigger than what we have (and in an area we wanted) would have been totally out of our reach -- pretty much everything on the market in our range was either a mobile home or a condo, or was smaller than our apartment. So I don't think it was dumb, necessarily; your needs were different from ours :)