Recently while reading an article about the housing market in Kiplinger magazine, we realized that many of you may feel you missed out as the first time home buyer’s tax credit draws to an end. The real story is that with mortgage rates at historic lows, hovering around 5%, there is still time to reap rewards. Is now the time for you to buy? Let’s look at some numbers.

According to the National Association of Realtors, at a national level, the median price for a single family home is $163,600. The local Wilmington, NC market saw a 14% decline in the past year with the current average sales price of $219,813. Although we are seeing our fair share of short sales and foreclosures, we aren’t riddled like some areas of the nation but the local unemployment rate of 9.7 % may play a role in further price declines.

Freddie Mac predicts mortgage rates near 5.7% for a 30 year fixed rate by the end of 2010. If you continue to wait hoping for prices to drop further any financial gain you could realize may be swallowed up by increased mortgage rates.

If you must sell before you are in position to purchase, get your home realistically priced from the start. Unfortunately, we see sellers who followed the market with their pricing strategy instead of pricing the home ahead of the market. Your home will not be worth more than it is right now; at least for the foreseeable future. We remind our sellers that the current market competition forces us to be in a price war and a beauty contest. Your profits will be greater and the days on the market less if you price it right from the get go. We can advise you how to make your home appealing and priced right to move. Give us a call today 910-442-2030.

See the link below for more information from the Kiplinger article.
http://kiplinger.com/magazine/archives/nows-the-time-to-buy-a-home.html

This entry was posted on Monday, June 21st, 2010 at 12:31 pm and is filed under News, Monthly Tidbits, Mortgage. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.