A post on the real estate market

A post on the real estate market

I was pretty surprised to hear from DH that he was seriously wanting to buy a new house. On one hand, it is the right time to buy a house with home prices dropping and all. However, we have no money!!! LOL!
We're still in debt from his being in school the past 2+ years. We had used our current home's equity to get us through those 2+ years. If we were to buy a house now, we'd no doubt have to sell our current home which as the trend has shown will not be easy. If we don't sell it, there is no way we can pay for 2 Mortgages on top of the payment we have to make on our home equity line of credit. Just not feasible at all.
If we do sell our current home, I think it will be below its fair market value. We'd still be selling it above what we had paid for. After all, we bought it just before the meteoric rise in home prices. But still, why would we sell at below market price if we don't have to.
Re: mortgages, I think the rates are going down again. It really is a buyer's market. It might be a good idea to refinance our current mortgage loan. There are sites out there that give you free quotes. I'll have to ask DH to crunch some numbers if it will be worth it. A while back we had considered it but decided against it because it just did not seem worth it with all the points and charges we were going to incur in having to refinance.

The Post about Finding a House

The Post about Finding a House

I saw DH browsing through some real estate listings the past couple of weeks. I know we are in no position financially to be in the market for a new house that I got real curious as to why he was looking at homes.
He's always told me that he felt like we were still going to move to another house. A few years ago, I thought he was crazy. I was satisfied with living here. Sure, it was not my dream dream house but I like it and it has become home to me...to us! But now that we have 4 kids, I can see why we will need a bigger house. LOL! So, we're dreaming - dreaming for our dream house. My dream is for a nice yard - big enough for the kids to play in and enough space so we can invite some friends over. Right now, there really isn't much space for that. DH's dream house has a game room with a pool table. Yep, he wants a pool table.
So, he's been browing through some real estate listings. And boy have the prices gone up since we were last in the market! The houses I saw were already in the $600's and these were your basic homes, not luxury homes at all! Can you imagine if we really look for THE house of our dreams! Whoa! It just brought home the point that we are in no shape to look for a new house right now. But that would be in our to-do list. We will get that dream home...we will!

Preying on Misfortune?

Preying on Misfortune?

Last Saturday, on our way to Pantages theater, conversation turned to the wildfires and its effects. SIL's BF who happens to be an architect shared some talk going around his field. We know that real estate has been down recently. And builders, contractors and the like have been affected by the slowing down of the market. Well, apparently talk has been going around that with all the burned homes due to the wildfires, this might actually be good business for them. People will rebuild, that's for sure. And of course, that means work for those involved in the building industry. I'm hoping that no unscrupulous builders will be preying and taking advantage of the misfortune these people have suffered.