Fuck prices. That’s not the reason to buy a house right now. The reason to buy a house right now is interest rates. We’re in the middle of a rate-suppressing Treasury bubble. Once that bubble ends, I predict vastly higher costs to carry a home given the constrained liquidity at major banks. This is because of a concerted effort from Congress and investors to buy those securities - and investors are already showing signs of bailing. The result is a comedy of “unintended consequences.” People WITH the cash to buy a home won’t, because lower costs of borrowing aren’t a significant incentive given all the pricing uncertainty. People without it will be encouraged to borrow as much as possible before rates go up. Hilariously, the result of Federal interference will be higher homeownership rates from the lowest-quality buyers and huge drops in home equity. The same phenomenon arguably created subprime to begin with.
I think we agree. Unless you either don’t care about your equity or you’re not putting equity in, price matters. Do you think the Treasury bubble will necessarily pop before housing bottoms? For what it’s worth, I think owning is very overrated. I don’t think the government should encourage home ownership at all. No mortgage interest deduction, no Fannie/Freddie. The problem is it’s entrenched as part of the American Dream.
