Real estate is a funny game. What is good for one party is often bad for the other. In the case of the recent seller's market, buyers were paying premiums for homes due to massive demand. Now that the market is cooling off, sellers are seeing prices flatten out or drop. While this is bad for sellers, it creates buying opportunities for the savvy buyer.
The recent blazing hot real estate market created a massive amount of wealth for many people. Whether you had owned a home for years or simple purchased three years or so ago, you may very well have doubled the value of your home. In such a case, you are sitting pretty regardless of what the market is doing now. What about people who purchased in the last year or so? Things may not be so rosy.
In the rush to get into the fast appreciating real estate market, many buyers in the last year paid top dollar for homes. To finance the homes, many of these buyers squeezed into unique loans that they can barely make the monthly payments on. As the market cools, many of these same people are finding their equity play has gone bad given the lack or even reduction of appreciation. To top matters off, they are suddenly seeing the interest rates on adjustable loans go up and up as the Federal Reserve raises interest rates to fight inflation. This double whammy is a disaster for such buyers and will further depress the market as more people look to sell out from under their debt.
As a buyer, the above situation presents you with a unique opportunity. While every local real estate market is different, more than a few will be hemorrhaging homes very soon. A classic example is the San Diego market, which has seen astronomical appreciation rates and new home growth. Nice tract homes have been selling for upwards of $800,000 in some parts of the city. As the market cools, people that financially squeezed into such homes are going to be looking to sell, sell, sell! Many will be selling at deflated prices or being foreclosed on. Indeed, the foreclosure market in many areas is going to be robust in the next few years.
While the slow down of the real estate market is not good for many homeowners, buyers should be in good shape. As the market swings to buyers, buying opportunities should be readily available.
