Housing Markets Hit Worst In……
Well, it’s no secret by now that housing really stinks pretty much anywhere you go. Sure, there are those few places that have magically escaped the wonders of the falling value of the average home, and the buyer’s market, so to speak, but the majority of even formerly hot markets that everyone wanted a piece of are on their way down, and many are saying that over the next twelve months they still have farther to fall. And what’s that saying, try not to catch a falling knife?
This is precisely why so many home sellers are opting to rent out their properties instead of trying to sell them, because they know that if they sell it they may not get the full asking price, and also may be forced to list it below what it is truly valued at to begin with, in order to compete in a stagnant real estate market.
Boy, if I only could have been buying my home now instead of a year ago, and I thought that then I was getting some great prices on listings! Now those same homes are probably going for less than they were a year ago when it seems like only the first hints of what was to come in the housing market were starting to make themselves painfully apparent.
Some of the states where home prices have been hard hit where you wouldn’t expect it, since they seem to be the land of opportunity when it comes to selling a home for a ton of money, are California, Miami and Phoenix, all of which were booming real estate markets and areas of high desire to live in for many people, including affluent people with lots of cash to spare when it came to buying a pad for themselves.
California, Miami and Phoenix are former hotbeds of real estate, and although homes sell for astronomical amounts and just a piece of property goes for so much that it would make anyone in my home state of Ohio’s head spin, since it would be the cost of a large piece of land and a nice home to boot here in Ohio in most areas save a few of the more affluent places.
California is definitely a shocking place to me, because I’ve been out there to visit my sister and even in her area which seemed out of the way and not close to any major cities or jobs, the property values were totally insane. An investment of just ten thousand dollars and a good mortgage rate or so would bring almost quadrupled ten years later in many cases, so a lot of people who bought wisely are sitting on gold mines out there.
However, the most affluent and high priced properties even now are looking at a real bust in pricing, and a very competitive market where they either have to be the best looking home on the block to get their price, or be priced very competitively to get what they want. Times they are a changing, to quote Bob Dylan.
