I’ve been in real estate for over 3 decades and retired when I sold my real estate company in NC. The housing market is currently in a “Bubble,” caused by pent up demand, supply price increases, a new demand for larger homes by stay at home workers who would like to continue to do so, and a lot of opportunistic profit mongering. It’s what the real estate industry always does.
This is NOT the time to buy a house IF you don’t have to!
Buy now and you are buying at almost the top of the Bubble. In the short future, if you do a typical finance, you will be “under” in your mortgage. If you pay cash, your investment value could drop anywhere from 10 - 20%. If you are in it for the long run, you will probably recoup, but it will be a LONGER long run at typical appreciation when it finally levels out. So, go into it knowing that.
Hopefully when this Bubble peaks - which I predict will be in mid to late 2023, but maybe sooner as the Fed increases interest rates fearing inflation - it will be a SOFT landing, rather than a CRASH.
Cyclical activity like this is NOT new to the real estate market, as the media hypes today. Actually this is normal, and the real estate industry is known to take it to the extreme limit until it shoots itself in the foot. I’ve seen it happen many times. In late 2006, at sales meetings with my agents I told them by 2008, over 400,000 real estate agents would leave the industry nationwide because they would no longer be able to make a living. It happened. Right now however, It’s a great time to be an agent because they’re not SELLING homes, they’re just TAKING ORDERS.
ONE STRATEGY to consider if you REALLY REALLY want to be in the Villages now: Buy the lowest priced hovel you can live with. Smaller outlay, smaller risk. Percentage of possible price drop is the same, but dollar value drop is less and more palatable. When the market normalizes, sell the hovel and buy the McMansion in a more realistic and stable market. Good luck!
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