Imo, yeah, probably. Home prices are fucking divorced from reality, but anyone telling you that we’re in a housing bubble is selling you a bridge. We basically stopped building housing in 2008- that’s almost twenty years now you ancient millennial* fucks- and what housing has been built has been small batches of single family homes where they don’t build more until that small batch sells. On top of that, you’ve got housing having been transformed into an investment (read that in a tone of disgust, please) with vacation rentals, REITs, and the landlord hustle further restricting supply. All that to say that the big fundamental difference between 2008 and now is that we’re massively short on supply. For there to be a price crash, we’d either need people to just stop needing a place to live on a massive scale or we’d need to start plunking down a commie block in every small or larger city a week for years (spoiler alert, not gonna happen)

I’m working with Strong Towns and some other groups trying to push the city to build a lot more housing and make our city more affordable to live in by breaking car dependency. With any luck, we’ll be able to unwind the absurd price of housing over years. I’d plunk down commie blocks of I could, but I can’t, so slowly deflating home prices over decades is the most realistic thing I can probably hope for. In other words, if you do buy, you’re unlikely to end up underwater by much.

* Am a millennial, am old fuck

Pay for a top notch home inspector, not affiliated with builder, seller, or realtor. For fucking real.

There is rarely a “good” time to buy a house. You need to do what makes financial sense for you. If it makes sense financially to buy a house right now, then I’d say do it.

It is (almost) always a good time to buy a house because it will (almost) always be good to own a house tomorrow.

Remember the alternative is throwing away approximately the same amount of money every month and never seeing that money again.

An interesting perspective I heard about is “affordability”. To describe that with my own words: if your income is stable or will grow compared to your housing costs, and housing costs are not burdensome to you, housing is affordable to you. Owning a house rather than having a lease should make your housing costs vary less, so if housing costs will go up in the future it might be useful to buy a house (but if housing costs will go down in the future it might not be useful to buy a house). I found some graphs for “Affordability”: https://dqydj.com/historical-home-affordability/ https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/FIXHAI

I have also heard that it’s hard to find people to do repair work in some places, and that people there charge a lot of money for their services. If you have trouble finding someone who you can pay just to produce a quote for a roof repair, the actual cost of housing will probably be higher than in other places.

I had a thought after looking at this post: I expect that it’s better to own land in places that are more likely for people to want to move to or work near.

You gotta judge the market in that area. I saw people buy at the wrong time, during a bubble.

I’m in the process of buying a new house.

I think “good time” is just kind of luck. I’m buying now because circumstances make it the best choice. Interest rates are kind of high (mine is 7%) and if that drops a few, I’ll refinance to get a better rate.

I looked for houses that had a space easily convertible to a MIL suite cut off from the rest of the house. My plan is to get the house payment down as quick as possible with a renter in the MIL suite.

Great advice in the other comments, so I’ll only add this - with this being your first house, if you can afford it, do a multifamily unit or a property that can be used as multifamily. Nearly everywhere is in a housing shortage, so you’ll be able to get a good win win with some renters that can help pay your mortgage faster while they have an affordable place to live. Best if the units can be fully separated so less drama.

Trying to work out house price trends is like trying to catch a falling knife. My advice would always be that you should just buy when you have the deposit and know you can make the mortgage payments.

I went with buying raw land out of the city, for me it’s a 30 minute drive and no traffic, my “rent” is under $200 for the year of property taxes. I own the land for less than 1 year of rent.

I can live in an RV, and I can build a house or convert a shed to live in so it’s super affordable, plus I have room for a garden to feed my family.

I’m neutral on the housing market right now. People buying houses are generally living in them (or renting them), there’s very little house flipping like in 2005-06. There’s also no interest-only mortgages, so people actually have the cash flow to stay. Rates are probably not going up, but they might come down a little. If they do drop, I think prices will go up proportionately such that the monthly payment is the same either way. New housing is being built, but not fast enough to make a major impact on demand in the near term.

Altogether, I think housing in the US is “fairly” valued on a supply/demand basis at the moment. If we get a recession, prices might dip, but I would be very surprised to see another crash like 2007-09. However, I also don’t expect to see prices go up quickly from here other than in response to lower interest rates. So, if I were making a new purchase decision today, I’d be thinking about the following:

• Do I plan to stay 5+ years (the longer, the better)
• Can I comfortably afford to pay the mortgage (or is it at least comparable to rent)?
• Can I afford a major repair bill? Especially if any of the big ticket items will hit their typical end of life in the next 5 years.

Here are some of my major home maintenance expenses from the last 10 years:

• Water supply line to the house failed (polybutylene): $2.5k
• Tankless hot water unit failed: $3.5k
• Wildlife exclusion due to rats in the attic and crawlspace: $2k
• Electrical repairs due to rats in the crawlspace chewing on wiring: $3.4k
• Totally gut and rebuild kitchen & bathroom due to plumbing failure: $2k deductible, plus my homeowner’s insurance increased every year since
• Replaced failed mini-split HVAC system: $3.5k
• Dig up and repair sewage line that was clogged with roots: $3.5k
• New sod to repair the lawn after the plumbers dug it up: $1.5k

Those are the big items I recall that I had little choice in. I also replaced my way past end of life 2 zone HVAC system for about $30k. I could have kept the old one running longer and I could have gotten a cheaper replacement (maybe $22k), but the old system was struggling and couldn’t keep the house comfortable anymore. I seem to recall hearing a good rule of thumb is to set aside 1-2% of your home’s value every year for major maintenance and that seems about right from my experience.

Since 2008 the best time to buy has been when you have the money and find something appropriate. It’s no different now. Millennials have been hoping for a housing crash they could take advantage of for 16 years and it hasn’t materialized. Prices just keep going up and historical evidence suggests that will continue until another crash at an indeterminate point in the future. Trying to time that point is only going to leave you as a permanent renter.

Not answering your question. But if you do buy, don’t listen to the realtor or loan officer about how big a loan you can afford. Both are incentivized to sell you the biggest house/loan. Neither will care when you’re struggling to pay for it.

You’re monthly payment plus insurance plus taxes should be something you could safely pay for six months while unemployed. If that’s impossible, get a small house. The worst possible situation is being house poor.

I made the decision to buy at a bad time, and it turns out the mortgage rates went much higher than what I bought at. I have no idea if that will happen again, but my mental health absolutely benefited from owning my house over the stress of renting and waiting to find out if I need to move every year again.

No one knows.

But, if rates suddenly drop you can always refinance.

The Trump administration had a few ideas on how to fix the market, which boiled down to removing regulations. The Harris administration had a more complete plan that addressed housing costs at different angles including regs but we no ont be getting that plan anytime soon.