What's Really Going On

There's a lot of noise out there.


A lot of competing viewpoints, optimists and pessimists, critics of the lending industry, champions of the real estate industry, greedy speculators, the disenchanted.

Would-be buyers are paralyzed. The market they're told, is going down, is going to go down, might already be down. Last year they were told: it's going up, it's still going up. Many buyers have lost a sense of urgency, flummoxed by these rivalrous declarations.

I can't tell you what's going to happen tomorrow, but I can tell you this: the market is still going up, steeply in some places. Ask anyone in the Kinney Heights/Western Heights grapevine, where a million dollar price tag is still the exception but no longer unheard of. In the Jefferson Park neighborhood, where the $600K barrier was shattered and is now ubiquitous. Talk to the diehards in Boyle Heights, where Four-fifty used to deliver something special.

So we're in a slow groove? Perhaps, but does it matter? The numbers are so friggin' huge, like the snowball that becomes an avalanche. Five percent appreciation on a $600,000.00 house is 30 grand! Seven percent is 42 grand!

The idea that you can time a real estate purchase is likely fallacious. Who really knows when they're buying at the bottom, or buying at the top? When rates are at their lowest? Or at their highest? Statistically speaking, nearly everyone buys or sells somewhere in between.

Ultimately, every client has a particular and unique circumstance. My job is to help clients figure out what THEY want, absent from industry jangle, and pop media babble. Does it make more sense to spend $18,000/year on rent, or $22,000/year on a mortgage payment with a tax write off? Is paying $400,000 at 6.25% equivalent to $370,000 at 7.25%? What does it mean to any one of them to own a home? Investment? Short term? Long term? Goal fulfillment? Artistic canvas? Housing payment stabilization? The answers are different for each. If I can't know all the answers, I'll start by trying to know most of the questions.