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Advice on preparing to purchase a Condo


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It sounds like you have a well thought out plan so hope you picked up a tip or two.

Don't start looking until you are ready. It's just psyching yourself up too much too early. Been there.

Buy at the right time for you. People in 2008 thought they would be getting 20% returns out of housing for the next couple years until it was back to pre-bust levels. The problem is that it isn't that houses were normal and went to undervalued, it's that they were significantly overvalued and went down to where they should be. So my point is, buy when it is right for you. If you are trying to bargain shop, seasonality trends are predictable and able to be utilized. Market trends are very hard to predict. At worst, I see housing values going up a couple percent if you wait 6 more months than you have to. Considering interest saved and the amortization schedule of mortgage payments, you might come out ahead by waiting anyways. Just buy when you are ready and don't pay attention to the market.

Last point, if you are buying a "move-in ready" home, there aren't a ton of steals. Taking risks on fixer uppers can lead to steals, but you gotta know what you are doing and be pretty handy with fixing things. But every move in quality home has 50 agents looking at it, investors, buyers, etc and they are all gonna value it within 5, maybe 10% of each other. Houses that sit on the market for half a year do so because they were priced ridiculously high, then the owner or bank drops the price in increments of a couple thousand until they actually hit the price the thing is worth. Agents aren't gonna take you to 50 places and make 50 lowball offers hoping that one goes through, and it's not like eBay where the same record sometimes sells for twice as much the same week.

So that is another long way of saying, buy when you are ready and until then, try and keep it out of your mind. There will always be good deals out there.

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