It Has Been More Than 3 Years...

No, the blog isn't coming to an and end and no, I didn't buy a property!

However, there are a few things I wanted to note. First, I found it interesting to go back to some of the earlier posts. Late August 2007...the good times were still rolling for the most part. Finding signs of distress wasn't always easy and it seemed like poorly located one bedroom condos were all that were cracking. After doing this for three years it isn't hard to find signs of distress. They are all over. Bailing builders, losing flippers, short sales, and a few foreclosures (many fewer than I was expecting, but the final chapter on that story has not yet been written in my opinion).

Prices declined as we expected and for a while it seemed the market was gapping down as many of us expected. But then it stopped going down and found a floor in the late 2004 rollback area for the most part. Prices even seemed to rally slightly off the bottom.

Rates have been brought down to 60 year lows and you can get a 30 year fixed conforming loan for not much more than 4% now. Combined with many other government actions, this has served to significantly cushion the blow.

We are certainly into the slower fall/winter period right now but it seems like not much is happening out there in the market. It is pretty boring. This is sort of how I see things going for a while. It seems like there are still a good number of semi-distressed situations out there where people can't afford to sell at market prices. The banks have seemingly continued to lag (I will be looking more into some of our old featured delinquent properties in the near future).

The economy isn't great but has so far been good enough to stay away from another crisis and it seems less likely we will have a double dip recession (as Calculated Risk predicted). Basically, I think we muddle along for a while. I think our SM real estate market is likely to show some more declines but as long as rates stay low and the economy doesn't tank then I don't see huge declines in the future.

As I see us being in a somewhat boring period, I haven't been posting as much and you will likely have noticed that I haven't really been doing any posts on condos. I stopped actively following the condo segment of the market some time ago because it was just becoming a lot of work and I wanted to focus on SFRs. While I think condos may offer an early insight on future market moves, I'm not personally that interested in them and it is a lot less work to just focus on houses.

So there it is. If you think I'm wildly wrong about something, then make a comment. I would also love to hear directly from those of you who are active in the market right now. Realtors, buyers, sellers, anyone. Send me a confidential e-mail if you want. As I said before, 2010-2012 seems like the time period where it will make sense to buy something if you are smart and drive a good deal. I don't see a lot of screaming deals out there right now at this moment, but we are in just the first of a three year window.