Patience and imagination are virtues ALL buyers need

All right, so for the last couple months I’ve been telling you that now is a good time to buy... With foreclosures and short sales currently on the market, and more to come in the next few years, a potential buyer can walk away paying 100k for a home that sold for 280k just three or four years ago… With that said, I came across an article this week that the Wall Street Journal did, and it pointed out an issue I realized I never talked about... That even though our current housing market is seeing an “oversupply of homes, it is also facing a new problem: a lack of attractive inventory.”

Here’s why…

Right now a lot of homes on the market are either short-sales or foreclosures. This means the homeowners living in them (or the tenants renting them) have no money at stake. They don’t care to make repairs to the home to make it more attractive for a buyer.  

They don’t care to touch up paint, or clean the walls to make the home look new. The owners or tenants of these homes aren’t getting any money from a short-sale or foreclosure and could care less if you see the home at its best… or its worst for that matter…

In the WSJ article, Slim Pickings Are Latest Headache for Home Sales, the author points out that because the inventory for 'regular' home sales are low, (not a short-sale, not a foreclosure) it may be hard for buyers to find their dream home, because a lot of homes they are looking at need a lot of work, and buyers just can’t see past it.

The bad news for buyers looking to find an immaculate home for a cheap price is, “regular” home sellers are pulling their homes off the market, rather than try to sell them at today's discounted prices.”

And really, you can’t blame them… How can they ask top dollar for their home, when the home next door is going for 100k less as a short-sale…?

So, like the title of my blog says, patience and imagination are virtues all buyers need in this type of market. Go into these short-sales and foreclosures knowing the situation. Know you may have to see past a lot of junk, dirty walls, stained carpet, chipped paint, broken sinks, cracked windows, trashed yards… If you can, you may just find your dream home, and at a great price. If you can’t see past it, and a lot of people can’t, just have some patience that the right home for you just hasn’t hit the market yet.

My wife always tells me, “all things in life happen at exactly when they are suppose to…” Purchasing a home is big deal. When it’s the right time, and right property, you’ll know.