If you don't buy now, will you regret it later?
Scott Van Voorhis posted this article on Boston.com the other day. Here's the link. Excerpt below. It's a great take on current conditions and a question I find myself pondering quite frequently.
I chatted with the Fox Business Network anchor in advance of a "housing summit" she hosted on her nightly consumer and personal finance show, The Willis Report.
Willis can hold forth with the best of them on the latest housing market woes and how the sector's implosion is dragging the whole economy down. But when it comes to doling out the individual advice, Willis, whose specialty is personal finance, is very much a housing bull.
Basically, rates are at historic lows and prices are down roughly 30 percent. If you want to buy a house, this is the time to do it. Look carefully, though, at the health of your local economy - in the end jobs and real estate are closely intertwined, she argues.
Now it probably helps that Willis lives outside of New York, one of the nation's strongest housing markets thanks to all that Wall Street cash - and bailout money courtesy of the rest of us. Still, Greater Boston has hardly been an economic laggard, with leading industries like tech, health care and life sciences hiring and expanding. "A lot of people out there want to get into this market," Willis notes. "People are just scared of housing now. They think it will never be a good investment again."
But while not unsympathetic, Willis also makes clear she takes a much different view. She looks at the fence sitters and predicts there will be some pretty unhappy campers four and five years down the line.
The aim is to buy low and sell high, and now is the low part. "I believe this is just dead wrong. If there ever was a big buying opportunity in this country, it is now," Willis argues.
Pretty strong words. What's your take?
