So how will you know when exactly is the best time to buy a new home?
“It’s always a good time to sell,” kwELITE Broker/Owner Renee Mueller said. “It just depends on where you’re going and what you have to buy.”
While monitoring if home values are rising or falling is important, the best time to buy a house is truly when you can afford it. Mueller said the ideal time is when your financial condition won’t suffer upon making such a purchase, you have a strong credit score and you can qualify for a good rate.
It’s no secret America experienced a serious housing bubble in the 2000s that was caused by an influx of money into housing markets, loose lending conditions and government policy aimed to better promote home ownership.
“People often times compare markets by looking at where the U.S. dollar is, but it’s probably better to look at where we are compared to pricing in 2006. Where the rates were, what the monthly mortgage is. Right now, it’s still more affordable for a monthly mortgage payment than it was in 2006,” Mueller said. “The supply of homes, for what we typically see (in Nebraska), in a balanced market, is not even at 50 percent.
“Buyers should start to become more optimistic. Prices haven’t been going down because of an over-supply, they’ve been going down because of under-demand! With an increase in buyer demand and a lack of supply, it’s going to be very hard for home prices to continue their current decline!”