patrick.net

Simple! I was unemployed and didn't have the cash, nor the income to buy anything. I hunkered down and now I have a great job and no hope to buy anything for at least a few years until the next bloodbath. FML

LuckyMethod says

Simple! I was unemployed and didn't have the cash, nor the income to buy anything. I hunkered down and now I have a great job and no hope to buy anything for at least a few years until the next bloodbath. FML

No regrets for you. you didn't have a choice.

I honestly regret not getting a stupid loan right before the slaughter, I would be still living rent free now. Being "smart" sometimes really doesn't pay.

LuckyMethod says

I honestly regret not getting a stupid loan right before the slaughter, I would be still living rent free now. Being "smart" sometimes really doesn't pay.

Sometimes stupid people just get lucky but that does not mean they will not get slaughtered on their next stupid mistake. I insist you keep being sane and think that it was one time bad luck for all the sane people.

Bought our second place, a small foreclosure, in 2010, as a vacation home.

The next door neighbors just sold. I thought their asking price was absurd and that the house would sit empty. It sold in a month at 98 percent asking price.

That price was 50 percent higher than what we paid for our foreclosure. Our place is 10 percent larger, many years newer construction, and generally a nicer layout and curb appeal.

I am not complaining, but if we wanted to buy a larger place in the area as a primary home, we are looking at major bucks, I preferred the 2010 market.

Prices in Monterey don't seem to be that much higher than when I bought in 2011 and I'm pretty sure they're lower than they were in 2009/2010. I guess it all depends where you are.

jaldi1 says

To this day i can't believe what was the reasoning behind that statement.

The title of this thread should read Recency Bias.

It depends on the area, of course, but there are many metrics and trendlines one can analyze, starting with price histories. Yes, 2009 was a bargain for anyone who had been looking in 2004, sure; but that's a poor comparison. Compare 2009 to a healthy, pre-housing/credit bubble year like 1998 or 1999, and you can easily see 2009 was no big bargain. It just looks good compared to insanity, and insanity junior (disclaimer: I bought two venture SFHs in Adelanto in 2009).

The buying public is both an impatient and highly suggestible bunch. The mechanisms deployed by both the Fed and the Treasury immediately after the bust not only successfully manipulated RRE prices from ever normalizing, but also successfully manipulated public perception, and that's what I find most interesting today.

More so 2010.

JodyChunder says

The title of this thread should read Recency Bias.

It depends on the area, of course, but there are many metrics and trendlines one can analyze, starting with price histories. Yes, 2009 was a bargain for anyone who had been looking in 2004, sure; but that's a poor comparison. Compare 2009 to a healthy, pre-housing/credit bubble year like 1998 or 1999, and you can easily see 2009 was no big bargain. It just looks good compared to insanity, and insanity junior (disclaimer: I bought two venture SFHs in Adelanto in 2009).

The buying public is both an impatient and highly suggestible bunch. The mechanisms deployed by both the Fed and the Treasury immediately after the bust not only successfully manipulated RRE prices from ever normalizing, but also successfully manipulated public perception, and that's what I find most interesting today.

I agree 1999 was better, but for somebody who didn't have the opportunity to buy before the 2000 , 2009/10 presented excellent opportunity based on price to rent ratio. don't you think so ?

Depends on the location. My location was still overpriced in 2008-2011. Now it is more so (Boston's area fortress). I'll happily continue to rent our smaller place for about 1/3 of what I'd be paying in mortgage/property tax for a property I'd be willing to buy, and don't worry about renovating 100+ years old house. Being hit with AMT also means homedebtorship is less attractive (no property tax deduction unless I divorce my wife).

It took years for prices in the Bay Area to recede somewhat, so buying during the crash could have meant paying at or close to what the prices were at the peak. We bought last year, which might have been the bottom of the market here, a full 200,000 less than what the house was worth at the peak.