Housing Market Near You

Is the housing market near you still completely f$&$ked?

I am in Philadelphia suburbs and inventory is dismally low. Last night I went to an open house and the street was packed with about 50 cars, and touring the house was shoulder to shoulder, like a crowded museum or something.

Even with a somewhat decent budget around $670k, I’ve put in around 10 offers at this point, all $50k-$100k over asking, and keep getting beat by all cash offers and people waiving any inspections or contingencies.

Trying to figure out if I want to wait until the economic shoe drops, or find somewhere else to live.

Is it still this bad everywhere?

If you can work remotely, why not move? I'd guess there are thousands of houses in Southern Arizona for $200,000 and less. I'm meeting more and more people who work remotely. Someone I know that works for Disney just bought a six-acre ranch with a decent manufactured house for $76,000.

Quote: billryan

If you can work remotely, why not move? I'd guess there are thousands of houses in Southern Arizona for $200,000 and less. I'm meeting more and more people who work remotely. Someone I know that works for Disney just bought a six-acre ranch with a decent manufactured house for $76,000.
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Yes, thinking about this a lot since my wife is WFH too. Couple of reasons holding us back….

We WFH but still occasionally need to go into office (couple times a month).

Moving across country is daunting to me, especially with a dog.

And all of our family lives in this area.

Quote: gamerfreak

Is it still this bad everywhere?
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I don't know about everywhere, but everywhere I've looked... yes it is.

Unimproved land far from population centers still seems affordable and reasonable, but that's not exactly housing.

It does seem that the market is somewhat less bad where "people" (meaning the public at large) don't want to go on vacation.

I did just talk to a guy who was laughing about how one of the nearby resort hotels is converting some of their hotel buildings to "aparthotel" condominia. I suppose if people can rent out their houses as hotels, hotels can rent out their hotels as houses.

You don't have to move cross country. Lots of houses in the Poconos/ Port Jervis area. You just have to decide to leave the city.

My wife's family is heavily into real estate. The market has cooled down somewhat in Tennessee, with prices dropping a bit after the large increases during the Covid period. Nashville is the exception and continues to be crazy. Availability of rental units is extremely low. Real estate corporations have been aggressively buying small houses in certain suburbs and converting them to rentals. I own a couple of houses and I probably receive an average of 5 unsolicited offers per week to buy one of my houses. That's down from previous levels of receiving about 8-10 unsolicited offers/week to buy them.

Market here is fueled by exodus of people from NYC and large northeastern cities; Tennessee is also getting some of the emigration out of California. (Tennessee was 2nd to Idaho as a site for relocations during/after the pandemic.)

In Minneapolis/St Paul region, the frenzied real estate market has also slowed a bit. To buy a house, you still have to offer above asking price (certainly in the downtown areas). But houses are now reasonably available in some of the suburbs.

Those are the areas I'm familiar with.

Quote: gamerfreak

Is the housing market near you still completely f$&$ked?

I am in Philadelphia suburbs and inventory is dismally low. Last night I went to an open house and the street was packed with about 50 cars, and touring the house was shoulder to shoulder, like a crowded museum or something.

Even with a somewhat decent budget around $670k, I’ve put in around 10 offers at this point, all $50k-$100k over asking, and keep getting beat by all cash offers and people waiving any inspections or contingencies.

Trying to figure out if I want to wait until the economic shoe drops, or find somewhere else to live.

Is it still this bad everywhere?
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I don't think it is that bad everywhere. Lots of areas are down close to 10% in the last year. Don't get me wrong, it is still expensive.

My wife and I both work from home and we moved about 18 months ago. We ended up buying near the top of the market and my wife flew back and forth between Las Vegas and Florida every week for seven weeks trying to buy a house. She would shop, put an offer in on a house above market price, return home to Las Vegas and find out we didn't get the house. Repeat for seven weeks. I believe we ended up getting the eight or ninth house we made an offer on. I never even saw the house until after driving 2000 miles to move in. I saw it on the day we moved in.

Prices here in Florida are going back down as the market is softer with interest rates being higher. I think I got in at 2.9% and todays rates are over 7%. On my house that alone would cost over $1000 more a month.

In Canada the market for houses has slowed down a lot. House prices have also dropped a ton. The problem now is high mortgage interest rates have made the buyers afraid. So lower house prices are offset by high mortgage interest. An example of falling prices, my houses was valued at 750,00 in late 2021 and today is worth 550.00 or less.

Miami Beach walk & talk - Florida: MASSIVE Insurance Increases Starting To BANKRUPT Homeowners - YouTube

Quote: ChumpChange

Miami Beach walk & talk - Florida: MASSIVE Insurance Increases Starting To BANKRUPT Homeowners

I think these stories are exaggerated for effect. My house insurance went from $3800 to $8200 in one year. I shopped it around and was able to get it for $4200. I was happy with a 10% increase.