the price of housing is stupid still. hope it gets cut in half from here. real estate agents are professional pumpers
Real estate agents are certainly professional pumpers, this weekend go to any open house and just talk with the real estate pumper for 5 mins and watch how positive they are on the entire housing market, they will ALWAYS say its a great time to buy, I remember looking at places a few years back and every one of them was saying now is the time to buy, fast forward and some of those properties dropped 10-20% months later. I think I may do that this weekend, I need a good laugh!
Never, ever look to a salesperson who is incentivized to sell you a product or service, for an honest, unbiased opinion. Of course they are going to compile a reasonable argument for why it's a good time to buy their product, so they can make a commission.
Where I live, my rent is actually more than what it costs to buy. I'm planning on buying around 2013, plus there's this uncertainty around the homeowner's mortgage deduction. If they change that, then the market will price that into home prices and home prices should fall a little bit more on top of that.
Where I live, about 4-5 million. Just property taxes on their own come out to a little over 1% per year. Lots of houses here in the 5-25 million range.