[quote author="roundcorners"]thanks for responding IHO! BTW did you get my PM?
no matter how I slice it, $300,000 is a chunk of change for our household...
At 6% 30-Year fixed it comes to $1,798.65... now I know for some that is a car payment but for us, a half time, single income earner that is a hefty chunk of change...
with all these 2010 Collection buyers now on the boards... what happened to all the perma-bears!? It takes me a weekend to decompress from the kool-aid that apparently is flowing again...
I like one of IR's sources for Eye H Bee news...
http://patrick.net/housing/crash.html
that brings back the perspective from the 10,000 foot view; I know Irvine is special and ALL RE rules don't apply to Irvine...[/quote]
Nice review of all the reasons not to buy yet.
I find Irvine's RE market very frustrating. We have not seen the price capitulation like some other OC cities or especially the Inland Empire.
We are moving sideways in Irvine RE and I am not confident when we will seem more downward pressure. The main problem now as has been pointed in other posts, is very low resale inventory. There will be little reason for owners to lower prices until there is more supply or drop in demand.
So the question becomes when will supply increase and demand drop? Wish I had a crystal ball on how banks will handle all this shadow inventory. Once they start unloading, watch out.
As for decreasing demand--I am hoping for the 2nd half of 2010 with a 50 basis point rise in mortgage rates and the permanent end to home buyers tax credits. The big questions is how will Obama/Congress respond if the RE market and economy takes a double dip. If the recent past is any guide, Obama will create some new housing program through the Fed or Fannie/Freddie and continue artificial price supports until he is reelected in 2012.
My worst fear as a potential buyer is that we could be seeing 3 or more years of flat to minimal price decreases in Irvine.