iNest Newsletter

Housing Boom Over? Take Advantage of A Buyers Market

The last few months have seen a flood of information about the end of the housing boom. Many potential home buyers are pondering if this is a good time to sit on the sidelines and wait and see where the housing market is headed.

Should you shop, buy or hibernate for awhile?

Here are some things to consider:

During the boom years of 2003-2005, home sellers and home builders were in an advantageous position. They were getting annual double-digit price increases. There were long lines at sales offices and existing homes often sold within days of going on the market. Investors were buying up homes like crazy. Well things have changed. In the current environment, buyers are fewer in number and slower to sign sales contracts. Investors are now often sellers rather than buyers. The builders do not want to hibernate. They want to continue building and selling homes. Thus, in order to sell homes in a slower market, many builders are offering buyer incentives -- discounts, free upgrades, big screen TV's and a variety of other special offers

Discounted financing packages are also increasingly being offered to make newly constructed homes more affordable. Builders typically have relationships with a preferred mortgage lender or they own a mortgage subsidiary. That sometimes offers them the opportunity to create mortgage incentives that can significantly lower payments during an introductory period. While the housing boom is certainly over, there are signs that the housing market is on the verge of stabilizing. The inventory of existing homes coming onto the market is now longer exploding, as the number of existing homes for sale has begun to flatten out. Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan has stated that the "worst may well be over". Adding, "I suspect that we are coming to the end of this downtrend, as applications for new mortgages, the most important series, have flattened out,"

Further, applications for U.S. home mortgages jumped in the latest week bolstered by increases in refinancing and new home purchases as long-term rates decreased, according to data from the Mortgage Bond Association. Mortgage rates continue to hover just slightly above the near-record lows they reached in 2004, and are a full two percentage points below the average interest rates paid by mortgage borrowers during the past three decades.

The best real estate bargains always occur in buyers' markets. Prices and terms this year may look like great deals in few years. Today's market offers an opportunity to lock in a low mortgage rates and take advantage of builder incentives. Another aspect of today's market that is particularly advantageous to buyers is the large inventory of quick delivery new construction homes that are available. Quick delivery homes are newly built homes that are already completed or are nearing completion. They offer all the benefits of a newly built home, but without your having to wait through the entire building process.

iNest has made it easy to use our website to search for quick delivery homes, Once you have clicked through to your metro market of interest, click on the "Quick Delivery" button on the upper left hand side of the webpage. The links on the iNest "Quick Delivery" page allow you to go directly to information about the available quick delivery new homes, without having to spend lots of time clicking through multiple pages on the builder's website to find the information you are looking for about quick delivery homes.