irvinehomeowner said:
Liar Loan said:
My second purchase was in Fall of 2010, near the bottom of the price cycle.
Except 2010 wasn't the bottom... it was more like 2 years later in 2012. So why did you buy in 2010 instead of waiting since prices were still dropping? You didn't want to save 5% or more?
Timing the price bottom was not my objective. Timing the affordability bottom was.
What that means is I was trying to time the lowest
cost of housing based on the combination of prices and interest rates. When I bought, QE1 (then simply known as QE) had ended and it was my belief that interests rates were heading up in 2011. Of course, I ended up being wrong about that, along with the rest of the world, but that was my thinking at the time. It didn't occur to me that QE2, QE3, and QE Infinity were still to come. I was willing to take a 5% price loss on paper if it meant scoring the lowest possible payment. Remember, I was still paying for a peak purchase condo, so I needed to qualify based on two mortgage payments (rents would not count as income on the condo for underwriting).
Unfortunately, most of my thinking on this subject was captured at the OC Reader which no longer exists, so I can't link to it.
The other reason that I bought in Fall 2010 is because my full PITI payment was equal to comparable rent (unlike my 2006 purchase where the cost of ownership was much higher than rents). So I viewed purchasing at that point as a very low risk proposition. Even if prices continued to decline, I could rent my house out if we needed to move and still break even.
Moral of the Story: Buying near the bottom resoundingly beats buying at the top! I can speak from experience and advise others to time the market cycle to improve their position if at all possible.