Buy or sell now? What are you crazy???!!!

It seems like the financial world is collapsing and I'm here thinking about real estate. Well yes, that is my job, but it also my passion and what I believe will bring people large amounts of wealth over time. And isn't that what we all really want? We all want to be comfortable in life both in our home and financially.

I can't help but think about the housing market like the stock market. It is going to have ups and downs (like we just saw last week) but over time both have shown to make people money. On Friday when the stock market was at it's lowest, our friend Graham called us up and said to start investing in the market. While he is not a stock broker, we consider him to know a good amount about investing and trust his opinion. Well, of course we waited and now are kicking ourselves because we could have made a lot of money fast by buying low and selling high.

In real estate terms the same idea applies. In some areas, houses are down %15 or more from what they were at their highest. That is a $75,000 savings for a $500,000 house. Now take that savings in addition to the still low ( but fluctuating by the day) interest rates and you can save yourself a ton of money over time. Say you wait a year and the interest rate goes up by 2% and prices go up by 5%. Are you going to kick yourselves because you waited? I probably would!

So all this is easy if you are a first time home buyer, right? Well, I do consider you the best off in this current situation. But what if you have to sell your home first? It can still workout, but you have to look at the big picture. Let's take TJ and I for example. We bought our first condo in 2005 and sold it a couple of months ago for $13,000 less then what we bought it for. We made it look picture perfect and made sure it was priced right in the current market and it sold in just 2 weeks. The house we wound up buying we got for $135,000 under what it originally listed for and $50,000 under what the sellers were asking at the time of the offer. Now I would take that savings any day over the money that we lost on our condo. To be honest, I don't really consider it a loss either. We got the tax deductions and didn't pay rent for 3 years. Not to mention all the friends we made. I think it almost evened out.

The lesson is to take advantage of the market we are in. It will prove to build your wealth in the long run.