Are We At Market Bottom?

Are we at the bottom of the Cincinnati Real Esate Market?  Is this a good time to buy a home in West Chester?  I want to buy a home in Mason – shoud I wait?  I hear a question like this every day.    No one knows if we are at the bottom of the market.  What we do know is it is a great time to buy a home.   Interest rates are stil low and there are lots of deals out there.  In fact, many buyers have figured this out.

Over the past few months we have noticed the best homes (homes priced right and fixed up) are selling in weeks, not months.  It has frustratred several of our buyers to see the home they wanted to buy go under contract before they put in an offer.  If you need to buy a home and find one you like, you should think about putting in an offer sooner versus later – it could be sold out from under you.

Homes that are over priced or not fixed up are just sitting there.  Just sitting, no offers, very few showings.

I think once we have a bunch of news articles that say we are going up, then we will go up.   In fact, there are so many buyers sitting by the sideline that if they all enter at once we could have a nice bounce (no, not a boom, but a bounce)

Here is one bit of good news – according to CNN Money, Cincinnati is one of the areas where home prices should start going UP.

“The city’s manufacturing-heavy economy should benefit from the falling dollar. Commercial building is up, and high-end developments are moving in. ” http://money.cnn.com/galleries/2008/real_estate/0804/gallery.best_buy_home.moneymag/3.html

If you are buying a home, I hope you plan on living there more than a year or two.  In five or six years, it will not matter if you purchased a home at the exact bottom.  What will matter is did you buy at a good price and with low interest rates!   Remember – Mortgage rates will impact your monthly payments more than a $5,000 dollar swing in the home price.