The Housing Market .....It's a Terrible time to Buy now !

'Reprinted with permission from author'

(1) House prices will keep falling. Prices are still dangerously high compared to incomes and rents. Banks say a safe mortgage is a maximum of 3 times the buyer's annual income with 20% downpayment. Landlords say a safe price is a maximum of 15 times the house's annual rent and buyers are still borrowing 6 times their income and putting only 3% down, and sellers are still asking 30 times annual rent, even after recent price declines. Renting is a cash business that proves what people can really pay based on their salary, not how much they can borrow. Salaries and rents prove that prices will keep falling for a long time. Anyone who bought a "bargain" this time last year is already sitting on a very painful loss.

(2) It's a terrible time to buy when interest rates are low, like now. Estate Agents just lie without shame about this fundamental fact. House prices fall as interest rates rise, because a fixed monthly payment covers a smaller mortgage at a higher interest rate. Since interest rates have nowhere to go but up, prices have nowhere to go but down. The way to win the game is to have cash on hand to buy outright at a low price when others cannot borrow very much because of high interest rates. To buy at a time of low interest rates and high prices like now is a mistake. It is far better to pay a low price with a high interest rate than a high price with a low interest rate, even if the mortgage payment is the same either way.

(3) Your property taxes and rates will be lower with a low purchase price. A low price gives you the ability to pay it all off instead of being a debt-slave for the rest of your life. Paying a high price now may trap you "under water", meaning you'll have a mortgage larger than the value of the house. Then you will not be able to refinance because there you'll have no equity, and will not be able to sell without a loss. Even if you get a long-term fixed rate mortgage, when rates inevitably go up the value of your property will go down. Paying a low price minimizes your damage.

(4) Because buyers already borrowed too much money and cannot pay it back. They spent it on houses that are now worth less than the loan. Buyers used too much leverage. Leverage means using debt to amplify gain. Most people forget that debt amplifies losses as well. If a buyer puts 10% down and the house goes down 10%, he has lost 100% of his money on paper. If he has to sell due to job loss or a mortgage rate adjustment, he's bankrupt in the real world.

(5) Higher-end houses especially are now set up for a huge fall in prices, since there is no more fake equity from the sale of a previously overvalued property. Without that equity, most people don't have the money needed for a down payment on an expensive house. It takes a very long time indeed to save up for a 20% downpayment when you're still making mortgage payments on an underwater house.

(6) There is a massive and growing backlog of latent repossessions on the horizon. Thousands of homeowners have simply stopped paying their mortgages. If a bank forecloses and takes possession of a house, that means the bank is responsible for property taxes and maintenance. Banks don't like those costs. If a bank then sells the foreclosure at current prices, the bank has to admit a loss on the loan. Banks like that cost even less. So there is a tsunami of foreclosures on the way that the banks are ignoring, for now. To prevent a justified foreclosure is also to prevent a deserving family from buying that house at a low price. One day, those foreclosures will wash over the landscape, decimating prices, and benefitting millions of families which will be able to buy a house without a suicidal level of debt, and maybe without any debt at all!

(7) First-time buyers have all been ruthlessly exploited and the supply of new victims is very low. "We were all corrupted by the housing boom, to some extent. People talked endlessly about how their houses were earning more than they did, never asking where all this free money was coming from. Well the truth is that it was being stolen from the next generation. Houses price increases don't produce wealth, they merely transfer it from the young to the old - from the coming generation of families who have to burden themselves with colossal debts if they want to own, to the baby boomers who are about to retire and live on the cash they make when they downsize."

(8) High house prices have been very unfair to new families, especially those with children. It is foolish for them to buy at current high prices, yet government leaders never talk about how lower house prices are good for South African families, instead preferring to sacrifice the young and poor to benefit the old and rich, and to make sure bankers have plenty of debt to earn interest on. Every "affordability" program drives prices higher by pushing buyers deeper into debt. Increased debt is not affordability, it's just pushing the reckoning into the future. The government pretends to be interested in affordable housing, but now that housing is becoming truly affordable via falling prices, they want to stop it?

(9) Bank and Estate Agents will disagree, because they get nothing if there is no sale. Agents want their clients to buy no matter how bad the deal is, which is the exact opposite of the buyer's best interest. Estate Agents take R35 billion each year in commissions from buyers. Agents claim the seller pays the commission, but always fail to mention that the seller gets that money from the buyer. Think about it: who brings the money to the table - the seller or the buyer? All money comes from buyers. No buyer, no money.

(10) Equity is just money. Renters are actually in a better position to build equity through investing in anything but housing. Renters can get rich much faster than owners, just by saving the money that owners are wasting on mortgages, taxes, and maintenance. Renters are getting paid to wait, both by the monthly savings and by watching the value of their savings increase relative to housing. Owers are losing every month by paying much more in interest than they would pay in rent. Owers are losing principal in a leveraged way as prices decline. A 14% decline completely wipes out all the equity of "owners" who actually own only 20% of their house.