The NAR says now is a great time to buy a home
For the past few months (or years) the National Association of Realtors (NAR) and its unscrupulous minions have been parroting the message that now is a great time to buy a house.
That may or may not be true. What is known is that Realtors always claim that “now” is a great time to buy no matter when “now” happens to be and what is happening to the market. Back in 2006, the NAR went about trying to convince the public that prices had stabilized, interest rates were low, the number of houses for sale were up and that it was a great time to buy a home. Today it’s the same song and dance — prices have stabilized, interest rates are low, the number of houses for sale are up and it’s a great time to buy a home.
This may be the ideal time to buy a house. It might not be the ideal time to buy a house. However, it’s impossible to rely on the NAR in determining such things as that bunch has a vested interest in always parroting the “now is a great time to buy” line. I’m not sure if they’re stupid, think we’re idiots or a combination of both. What is very clear, however, is that the NAR’s always optimistic view of housing markets is simply not credible.
Back when I was taking economics classes in college (institutions that most NAR members have only a passing familiarity with), we learned about market forces, supply and demand — that kind of stuff.
What we saw from about 1999 through part of 2007 was the growing sub-prime lending market. Getting a “0 down” loan for about any house you wanted was a breeze. In that kind of environment, prices inflated — when people don’t care how much something costs, the cost goes up.
That debt-heavy system proved unsustainable and crashed. In 2008, the government started paying people to buy houses by offering them tax credits and went on to sink $1.25 trillion of our tax dollars into the mortgage backed securities market in a successful attempt to hold mortgage interest rates low. Those actions — like the ridiculous availability of credit that crashed housing markets in the first place — were inflationary in nature and, yes, artificially boosted home prices.
Is it a good time to buy a home? That all depends on you. Do some research and figure out for yourself if housing prices have bottomed out (an opinion the NAR has wrongly shared for years) or if we’ll continue to see prices drop now that inflationary measures like easy credit and government stimulus money are out of the system.
Whatever you do, however, don’t take the NAR’s word for anything. The NAR is a heavily biased organization that will tell you it’s always a good time to buy a house.
