Downsizing, Financial Planning, Market Update, Trends

Zillow Reports 2005 Price Levels, Bad and Good News

According to Zillow, if you bought your home in the summer of  2005, and it is a statistically average home, you could get out of it about what you paid for it if you sold it today. The Seattle Times article goes on to discuss the dire numbers of how many sales are distress sales. Again, these are the sales of homes that were purchased after the summer of 2005. According to Case-Shiller, the date as of November is January 2006. They are right, it’s not pretty out there.

There is good news in this, if you are not one of the unfortunate homeowners who purchased or refinanced the equity out of their home in the past few years. Actually there is 2 kinds of good news, one if you are thinking of buying and the other if you want to sell.

If you want to buy or invest this may be your best opportunity as prices are down, and there is a lot of inventory, both listed and not listed. Real estate is even more affordable because of historically now interest rates, which economists insist cannot last. A lot of this inventory is high quality in good areas that will appreciate first when things swing back.

If you want to sell and have long term equity, you are in great shape! If you have owned your home since 1995, or 1985, or 1975, you have seen phenominal appreciation, of which this latest bubble has been a layer of icing on the top. You till have a lot of equity to work with. You can look at it as if history from 2005 until now didn’t happen, because you can sell and buy at 2005 prices, but with less competition on the buying side and lots of inventory.  If you are thinking of downsizing,  this is a unique time to buy because of the huge selection of homes available, both new and pre-owned. I see fantastic deals on new and quality conversion condos in appealing walkable neighborhoods every day with developers begging for offers and offering huge concessions to get their units sold. Many of these deals are not on the mls searches.

If you are curious about the great values out there, contact me and let me know what you are looking for and what areas.