Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Except rent keeps going up year after year, to keep up with the market.

Still better than buying at the current interest rates and having 80% of your mortgage payment go to interest. Plus the transaction costs of buying and maintenance costs. Rents don't increase at this rate. It is much smarter financial decision to rent and invest any potential downpayment right now for those who do not own. Owning is way overrated in general and massively more so in the current scenario.

Home prices will just keep going up.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This thread may not age well.

People on this board have been calling this a bubble for ten years.

At some point, there likely will be a downturn, and then we'll all hear from them, "See?!?!?! We were right all along!"

Just like the broken clock . . .

I am not someone who thinks there will be a crash but I can understand why someone might feel that way. Home prices went up like 40% in a couple years - that just doesn't seem like a normal market. I don't see any reason right now why prices would go down (demand still way outstrips supply) but this market does seem a bit ... abnormal.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This thread may not age well.

People on this board have been calling this a bubble for ten years.

At some point, there likely will be a downturn, and then we'll all hear from them, "See?!?!?! We were right all along!"

Just like the broken clock . . .

Anonymous wrote:Except rent keeps going up year after year, to keep up with the market.

https://www.wsj.com/economy/housing/theres-never-been-a-worse-time-to-buy-instead-of-rent-bd3e80d9

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Except rent keeps going up year after year, to keep up with the market.

Still better than buying at the current interest rates and having 80% of your mortgage payment go to interest. Plus the transaction costs of buying and maintenance costs. Rents don't increase at this rate. It is much smarter financial decision to rent and invest any potential downpayment right now for those who do not own. Owning is way overrated in general and massively more so in the current scenario.

No, sharing walls and owning nothing is not better at all. It's demoralizing. And life is short.

We share a wall and barely hear anything even when our neighbors have contractors working in their house.

We don't share a wall, we rent a $1.65M SFH in NWDC for $5K per month. There are some really annoying things about not owning the home (e.g., having our hands tied a bit on what work can be done), but financially it's a no brainer. We have a good deal, and it's all deal-specific, but the idea that owning always beats renting is BS.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Except rent keeps going up year after year, to keep up with the market.

Still better than buying at the current interest rates and having 80% of your mortgage payment go to interest. Plus the transaction costs of buying and maintenance costs. Rents don't increase at this rate. It is much smarter financial decision to rent and invest any potential downpayment right now for those who do not own. Owning is way overrated in general and massively more so in the current scenario.

No, sharing walls and owning nothing is not better at all. It's demoralizing. And life is short.

We share a wall and barely hear anything even when our neighbors have contractors working in their house.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Except rent keeps going up year after year, to keep up with the market.

Still better than buying at the current interest rates and having 80% of your mortgage payment go to interest. Plus the transaction costs of buying and maintenance costs. Rents don't increase at this rate. It is much smarter financial decision to rent and invest any potential downpayment right now for those who do not own. Owning is way overrated in general and massively more so in the current scenario.

No, sharing walls and owning nothing is not better at all. It's demoralizing. And life is short.

Anonymous wrote:Except rent keeps going up year after year, to keep up with the market.

They are somehow super astute experts for holding out and sitting on the sidelines, going stir crazy sharing walls with strangers. All the SFH values are going to crash any day now!

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This thread may not age well.

Thanks for chiming in, apartment dweller

Actual, I own a townhouse in a desirable inside-the-beltway location that I bought in 2010, and it's gone up about 60%, and my interest rate is 2.5%. Not going to sugar coat it, I would love to trade up, but if it doesn't happen for a while, so be it.

If I were an apartment dweller, though, I'd be pretty OK with that. Renting is the biggest bargain vs home prices than it has been at any point in history.

The people who should be most worried, and perhaps the PP is in this group, are those who bought at peak prices with a high interest rate, especially as it looks increasingly unlikely that rates are going to come down.

People in this group are buying with the understanding that prices coming down is a possibility. The risk is that their purchase might be a bad deal in hindsight, depending on how the market plays out, but that is not always the most important factor for whether a purchase is the right move.

They should not be "worried" at all unless they make bad financial decisions, like going all in on rates coming down very soon so they can refinance, which I would suspect a very small minority of people being dumb enough to do.

Tbh unless you’re selling, none of it matters anyway.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This thread may not age well.

Thanks for chiming in, apartment dweller

Actual, I own a townhouse in a desirable inside-the-beltway location that I bought in 2010, and it's gone up about 60%, and my interest rate is 2.5%. Not going to sugar coat it, I would love to trade up, but if it doesn't happen for a while, so be it.

If I were an apartment dweller, though, I'd be pretty OK with that. Renting is the biggest bargain vs home prices than it has been at any point in history.

The people who should be most worried, and perhaps the PP is in this group, are those who bought at peak prices with a high interest rate, especially as it looks increasingly unlikely that rates are going to come down.

People in this group are buying with the understanding that prices coming down is a possibility. The risk is that their purchase might be a bad deal in hindsight, depending on how the market plays out, but that is not always the most important factor for whether a purchase is the right move.

They should not be "worried" at all unless they make bad financial decisions, like going all in on rates coming down very soon so they can refinance, which I would suspect a very small minority of people being dumb enough to do.

We’ve been interviewing realtors and mortgage brokers and every single one of them has the same schpeel: “buy now because prices are going to skyrocket when interest rates come down. And they’re for sure coming down, they already have this week!” One mortgage broker told me what price of house we’d be looking at based on what we wanted to pay monthly and was, no lie, telling us we could afford a house over $250k what the actual payments would be with taxes and insurance.

They’re lying through their teeth and I call them on it, and you can tell that no one else ever does. Their clients just believe them since “they’re the experts.” Not only is it obnoxious but when (not if) their clients lose their house to the bank I firmly believe these realtors should go to jail.

Anonymous wrote:Except rent keeps going up year after year, to keep up with the market.

Still better than buying at the current interest rates and having 80% of your mortgage payment go to interest. Plus the transaction costs of buying and maintenance costs. Rents don't increase at this rate. It is much smarter financial decision to rent and invest any potential downpayment right now for those who do not own. Owning is way overrated in general and massively more so in the current scenario.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This thread may not age well.

Thanks for chiming in, apartment dweller

Go back to the whole you came out of you unemployed stay at home wife troll...

As for the topic, part of the country certainly is overvalued, but not the DMV area. Prices did not rise as much here as it did elsewhere (last I checked I think it was 30% from Jan 2020 to now ish per case Schiller, which, once you take into account 20% inflation in that same time period, is only a 10% increase in real terms, or around 3% average per year).

I think it's of little comfort to prospective buyers that prices have only gone up a moderate amount in real terms. Especially those banking on the market to crash (and trying to lord that over recent buyers).

Everything is relative. We bought in 2021. At the time, we thought we were buying "at the top of the market". We were kicking ourselves for not buying in 2019. From that perspective, we were "losers" in the real estate game. People who buy now may well be "winners" compared to future buyers. Though, IMO, the true winners are anyone who lands in a home they love and can afford, regardless of how much it may have cost if they bought earlier.

Except rent keeps going up year after year, to keep up with the market.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This thread may not age well.

People on this board have been calling this a bubble for ten years.

Translation: Seething renters and condo and townhome residents. lol

Yep its just hilarious that we've been unable to buy the last couple years. We've put in offers on 8 homes. Renting isn't all bad though.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This thread may not age well.

Thanks for chiming in, apartment dweller

Actual, I own a townhouse in a desirable inside-the-beltway location that I bought in 2010, and it's gone up about 60%, and my interest rate is 2.5%. Not going to sugar coat it, I would love to trade up, but if it doesn't happen for a while, so be it.

If I were an apartment dweller, though, I'd be pretty OK with that. Renting is the biggest bargain vs home prices than it has been at any point in history.

The people who should be most worried, and perhaps the PP is in this group, are those who bought at peak prices with a high interest rate, especially as it looks increasingly unlikely that rates are going to come down.

People in this group are buying with the understanding that prices coming down is a possibility. The risk is that their purchase might be a bad deal in hindsight, depending on how the market plays out, but that is not always the most important factor for whether a purchase is the right move.

They should not be "worried" at all unless they make bad financial decisions, like going all in on rates coming down very soon so they can refinance, which I would suspect a very small minority of people being dumb enough to do.