I haven’t been paying attention. It seems that escalated quickly. But I wasn’t paying much attention in 08 either.
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What is the opinion here on buying or building in a hot (sellers) market. Renting now and planning on staying long term. We were looking at building before all this, and new builds in our market were going up 4k every 2 weeks.

What are your thoughts on what this will do to the market. I know it's a complicated question.

If it helps, my job is quite secure.
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If you’ve got enough cash to get considerable equity in the place I’d say there isn’t a huge problem. If you’ve got to leverage pretty hard I’d pass.

If it were me I’d need to be fairly confident it found a bottom before I did much.
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Huh? No.

This action has been reasonably well-telegraphed in financial markets over the last few days. The Fed only has approval to buy securities issued by the federal government or the GSEs (“agencies”). Agency mortgage-backed securities (MBS) have dramatically underperformed recently. The Fed gets meaningfully more bang for its buck by buying MBS than Treasuries, so it makes a lot of sense that they would include them in this program.

I don’t want to get too wonky, but markets have been so broken recently. Easily more than I’ve seen at any point recently and the speed of deterioration was worse than 2008. There are some very basic things in markets that aren’t functioning properly - namely something called Treasury/futures basis trades. If those are so disjointed - and those are truly risk-free trades if you can hold them for a few months - then no other risky asset on the planet will ever end up trading well. So the Fed needs to fix those and that’s what they’re doing.

This doesn’t solve the situation we’re in as there’s no silver bullet. But the Fed is doing what it can and that counts for something. Though it’ll be overwhelmed by the storm that’s still coming. I think we’re in the middle of the 4th inning right now. But valuations in the equity market (vs 0% rates) are starting to become more long-term interesting.
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Yes, plz. It'll be a good time to pick up stocks beaten down by everything dropping over the next few months. was looking at ROST v TJX a bit ago. LULU and ULTA might be decent retail adds long term?
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Found a bottom? I'm new to the terminology.

I'm doing a 0% down loan. My hesitation in waiting is the way the market is moving. The house we are renting has gone up 120k in 3 years.
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Things stop going down.

If you do a $0 down loan and your house loses $5,000 of value in 3 months that is how foreclosures happen. That’s what happened in 2008
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This.

Zero down loans still occur?

Yikes!
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For certain qualifications, yes.

My job is extremely secure, so I have no concerns about not making my payments.
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I'd think that's a different question than overall economic stuff and is kind of independent. We may have thoughts about real estate trends overall, but buying versus building merely seems like a matter of taste and existing inventory.

I find it interesting that people have such different preferences on homes, by the way. I live in a 100+ year old house, and my wife and I love it. It's got nice features and there are no surprises since it's survived for 100+ years. But I know other people who strongly prefer new construction and wouldn't even consider a house like ours.
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I appreciate that feedback. I am in a really unique market where there really are no old homes, and homes are being built at a very very rapid pace. Maybe it's not that unique, but inventory doesn't last long, and hasn't for the last 18 months.

The market in my area is what it troubling me. The prices keep going up and I have some worry that I will get priced out of the market. If I found a resale I like I would not hesitate to buy

I am more curious what your thoughts were on the current economic situation and its effect on home buying and building. Certainly low rates encourage buying, but people may be feeling economically insecure.
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If you're confident that your job is secure, times like these are the best times to buy. Lower rates, people's hoarding instincts up, and probably fewer people going to open houses? That seems like a recipe for a good deal. And in the long run, I think it's good from a wealth perspective to diversify your assets with home equity as well as traditional savings.

There's a house a few blocks away from mine that's intriguing, and I think it's underpriced. It's also got a guest house, which is the really intriguing part, because I could legitimately make it two rentals. It's too expensive for a cash purchase, which I'd prefer, but it's tempting nonetheless. It's been on the market for a while, so I'm curious if I could throw a lowball offer out there.
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Also, I've preached this before, but if your market has any developments or zoning that allows mother-in-law apartments in new construction, or if you can buy an existing home with a mother-in-law apartment, jump on one of those. Having an onsite apartment means you'll always have a good tenant (bad ones won't want to be next to you), and it gives you an income stream that goes up each year while the cost of the mortgage stays the same. I've got one, and it prints money for me with very little work or hassle.
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If you could provide 20% equity I'd say do it in a heartbeat, but the risk you face if the economic conditions slow down in your area, the value of your house will decrease and you will have negative equity in your house. If you had some equity, you could handle a little uncertainty, but banks get hella jumpy at negative equity loans.
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Exactly the feedback I was looking for. Thank you
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