Zillow February 21, 2008
Posted by pf in Home Purchase.Tags: domania, foreclosures, homegain, real-estate, realestateabc, stimulus package, subprime, trulia, zillow
3 comments
As I continue to keep tabs on our local real-estate market (Buying a More Expensive House: Update), I have found myself spending some time on sites that provide information on things like:
- foreclosures – going up / down? where?
- homes for sale – listings steady or declining? Seeing any changes month to month?
- home value estimates – steady? declining? by how much?
In particular, I have spent some time on Zillow.com where one can go and look at their house or other houses in whatever area you may be interested in to obtain a Zestimate of the value based upon some methodology / algorithm they have come up with. They also provide you with some data as to the zestimate accuracy for various markets (in my case, not too shabby at all).
Real Estate Market: $100K off of a New Home February 16, 2008
Posted by pf in Expenses and Savings, Home Purchase.Tags: builder, foreclosure, home builder, homeowner, house, real estate market, real-estate, sub-prime
6 comments
As they often say, “real-estate is local”. Thus far, the local real-estate in my area has been fairly resistant to the types of price drops we have seen in some of the sunnier parts of the country (Florida, Nevada, Arizona, etc.)…until now.
Today, I saw an ad for $100K off the base price of newly built homes by a local builder. Wow. I suspect this ad sent shivers down many people’s spine:
- A “shot across the bow” for other builders who will feel additional pressure on their own prices
- A startling wake-up call for existing home owner’s who are trying to hang tight
- A body blow for those who currently have their home for sale or soon will be
- Absolute despair for those who recently purchased houses from this builder in the last year or so
Buying a More Expensive House: Update January 24, 2008
Posted by pf in Expenses and Savings, Home Purchase.Tags: expensive, house, interest rate, investment, mortgage, real-estate
2 comments
Some months ago, I had written some thoughts about our potential purchase of a new home (Buying A More Expensive House: Good Investment?). Since then, the real-estate market has tanked. This was an easy reason to postpone any purchase while we watched how things shake out. More specifically, we are hopeful that the downturn will work to our advantage and create an opportunity to buy our house at a reduced cost. Also, we have discovered that our family still “fits” into our house and although not our ideal, we are clearly not suffocating. Finally, we also really like watching that mortgage balance go down each month…almost $1000 in principal…significant money.
Recently, we had another discussion where we talked about the recent decline in interest rates and whether or not it would be enough of a catalyst to push us to make a purchase. Honestly, I’ve felt very warm and fuzzy about our decision to delay and decision and the thought of actually doing something made me very uncomfortable…mostly from a financial perspective. Admittedly, if we staying in our budget range, the anticipated payments plus the inevitable increase in property taxes are manageable. Unfortunately, in order to do so, we will have to get ourselves back into a 30 year mortgage, which makes me feel a bit ill.
My Personal Finance Odyssey 