Is this the right time to buy a home?Have housing prices bottomed out? Will prices continue to fall? Will the market rebound soon? Does it make sense to buy now?
Every day I hear roughly the same concerns from many of the prospective home buyers. We (the consuming public) have been trained to think of our home as an investment first and have lost sight of why we are truly interested in owning a home in the first place. Just for a moment - let go of those voices in your head...the ones that make you feel like you'd better make the perfect financial decision or else you're an idiot. When we get down to the basics, buying a home has almost nothing to do with money. If you are like the rest of the human race, you are looking for a place to raise and educate your children, a place where you will feel safe, a place to have plenty of living space, and a place where you can have control over the space.
While I understand that it is easy to get fixated on price, it is really the cost of housing that you should be focused on. As you wait for prices to fall, rising interest rates can wind up costing you more over the life of the mortgage.
Buying a home can be a very good investment - historically it has been, but let's stop treating it like an ounce of gold where we get upset when the price drops. Your return on investment is the enjoyment, the use, and the pride that it brings you over your ownership period.
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