The Ol' Real Estate Philosopher
When will buying a home be easy?
You may or not be shocked to learn that for many home buyers these days, buying is anything but easy.
Yes, I know, we're all supposed to be hunkered down avoiding real estate until the neon "all clear" sign lights up the heavens, but the funny thing is that many of your fellow citizens—look around and you'll see what I mean—aren't waiting for the "all clear" sign, because by the time its reassuring glow lights up the heavens, Armageddon is warming up in the bullpen.
And besides, time waits for no one, or at least for no one with places to go and things to do. Which seems to be many if not most people these days. Which might be typical human nature, or might just be typical human nature as practiced here in the go-go Bay Area.
So I regret to inform you that many if not most people are getting on with their lives, which for many if not most seems to mean buying a home. Yes, I know, the real estate bust thoroughly discredited the idea that owning your own home is a good thing, but the funny thing is that many of your fellow citizens—look around and you'll see what I mean—didn't get the memo. And for some inexplicable reason they're hell-bent on buying a home. I'm sure the real estate academics and other scoffers can give us a rational and condescending explanation for this irrational mass behavior and are doing so right now, as the train leaves the station without them one more time.
So local real estate is back to where it was early this decade, post-dot bust and pre-2005, with first-time buyers (and first-time move-up buyers) wantonly throwing themselves at any home well-priced and well-presented (and even not so well-presented) under $600-800k in entry-level neighborhoods and up to $1.2-1.5M in move-up neighborhoods.
And it's sellers, not buyers, who have made themselves scarce these days.
Yes, I know, it wasn't supposed to be this way. Right about now we were supposed to be standing hip deep in a flood tide of unsalable homes: the "shadow inventory" of bank-owned homes that every well-informed scoffer knows is hiding under the bed—after all, banks can't hold 'em off the market forever—and the homes of all the poor saps with adjustable-rate loans coiled and ready to strike—after all, ballooning mortgage payments must throw them in the street—and with the homes of all the unemployed—after all, Silicon Valley was hit hard by the Great Recession.
Yes, Armageddon will happen any minute now, I'm reliably informed, and we'll all have ringside seats and I'll spring for the popcorn. But so far it hasn't happened, and maybe it won't, at least not like the scoffers say it will, and besides, many if not most people have places to go and things to do and sorry, they can't wait for Armageddon to show up whenever it feels like it. And anyway maybe most people are optimists—maybe that's why our species is still around—and besides, most people have places to go and things to do. Disaster narrowly averted one more time, and being an optimist with places to go and things to do still beats the alternative.
So local real estate is back to multiple offers and offer dates and busy opens and buyers moaning about not enough good inventory. And the more it's like this, the more it'll be like this, as the market develops its own fearsome momentum, dragging along even some of the scoffers, until one day the market goes BANG one more time and we're back to late 2008 aka Armageddon.
And then it'll be easy to buy. Because everyone will be a scoffer, and the real estate market will be so quiet you can hear a pin drop.