Now is a great time to buy a home. As long as you get an interest rate in the 5-7% range. Rates will never get down into the 3's and 4's again, and if they do, that is an indication of a larger problem.


So now is a great time to buy a house at an inflated value, with a high interest rate, so these people can get a commission off either the loan or the purchase of real estate is the cliff notes.

Something dont sound right. But hey, theyre the pros, better listen to them. Theyre just looking out for you.

Hate to break it to you guys, but house prices are not coming down. The only way they are coming down is if you can get people to sell their land/lots cheaper, get everyone performing the trade labor to build it, to take a major pay cut (framers, roofers, plumbers, electricians, concrete, guys, masons, cabinet makers, flooring guys, etc), then get everyone selling materials to drop their prices on avg by 30-80%, get the real estate agents to drop their commissions, then get Biden to take us back to energy independence so shipping and trucking costs drop, and then get the EPA to loosen up all the efficiency and air quality regs that are driving prices on everything, especially HVAC and appliances, straight up into the stratopshere. While you're at it, if you could get the insurance companies to lower their premiums, that would help too.

Most builders are still making the exact same profit percentages that they used to make. If house prices are up $200,000, probably $25,000 of that is additional builder profit. His overhead costs are up and he's taking a much bigger risk on every house he builds, because he's having to invest double the cash to build the same house. The other $175,000 in the increase is due to lot cost, labor, sub-contractor, and material price increases. Builders are simply applying the same profit percentage they always have, to an actual cost to buy the lot and build that house, that has doubled. The prices of homes are up because everything else, listed above, that you have to have to build the house, are up by 30-100%, or more, and still rising (just slower than it was though). Example: when the house was selling for $200,000 real estate agents were getting $12,000 in commission to list, show and fill in the blanks on a 5-7 page contract on the house. Assume that same house is now selling for $500,000 and the real estate agents are getting $30,000 in commissions for selling the exact same house and doing the exact same amount of work they did 3-6 yrs ago, they're just getting paid almost triple what they were, to do the exact same amount of work now. Nobody involved is even remotely considering the reality of the situation (how high home prices are going) and nobody involved in the process, is willing or about to even consider, taking a pay cut.

You can want all you want but the price of new construction is not going to move below where it currently is. It's the new norm, thanks to COVID and the free Covid money that Trump put into the economy, along with the current democrat administration's inability to see what printing 6-8 additional trillion dollars and super-charging the already burning inflation fire, would do.

Interest rates between 6 and 7% are historically good rates. You can wish all you want but the 3-5% mortgage range was a once in a lifetime deal that is never coming back. If you want or need a new house, you'd better just nut up and buy it cause there arent any fire sales or great deals on the horizon for the residential market.

^^^^^like I wasn’t already having major anxiety about building our home. We have plans but no builder yet. I’ve never had a panic attack but reading your post makes me wonder if I’m having one…..

Abolt, the plan i have in my head to build our house circumvents almost everything you listed that runs the price up. I do have access to some things, because of my work, that most people wouldnt have access to. Im also naturally a thrifty person and a hard worker. I have a plan and a pricepoint in my head. I intend to stay with it. I cant wait to see how it turns out. Just getting started but its clicking right along.

^^^ I wish I had any skills at all that would help. I do have friends that can put in drives and others for septic, etc but I doubt they gonna give me a “friends” deal. We’ll see.

Right now i have about 2000 sq ft of my lumber cut. Im $150 to the good on that. That $150 will get me about 500-600 more sq ft of lumber. My logs for my barn will be cut up next week. The sawing will cost me $1000. The posts will cost me $850. I did some trading on the tin. New tin, not all the same color, ill paint or coolseal it. The barn, 40x50, will cost me about $2500 i guess, and some work. A neighbor jyst had a similar, little bit more fancy barn built for around $50k. As soon as the barn is built, this summer hopefully, i will start having my lumber for the house build sawed at a little quicker pace. I should have it all sawed and dried in the next two years. At that point we will start kiln drying it and putting it together. If it all goes according to plan, i wont have too much in materials. 32ft 4x12 beams will be the biggest expense. Theyll be $45 each. I cant shave any more off that.

This is all going to crash, because wages aren't keeping up with costs. Just like the big 3 can't sell $100K half ton trucks, the developers can't sell an unlmited supply of $500K houses. The average salary in Alabama isn't even $50K a year.

I need about a $25K a year raise just to get me to where I was when Trump left office.

The only cost that has actually come down, on building a house, in the past 12 months is lumber, and it's still not really down to where it should be. It's down from the ridiculously, artificially inflated, price-gouging prices it was hitting back in 2022 but it's not back to where it was pre-covid and IMO, it's not going to go back there again either. Lumber, wire, and believe it or not cabinets, have held fairly flat for the past 6 months or so but everything else (concrete, sheetrock, shingles, paint, hardi, brick, granite, quartz, vinyl, windows, doors, trim, labor, fixtures, etc) are holding tight to the higher pricing with most still creeping up to some minor extent. Instead of getting price increase letters every week or every month, they are now coming quarterly or on six months intervals. I wish the news was better but it is the new reality that we are living in.

With interest rates still up but demand still pretty stable, I expect that pricing on almost everything building related, will hold tight at pretty much right where it is today, at least through the end of the year. Barring of course, any catastrophe or world event. It's a whole lot more stable time, from a projectable cost standpoint, to build right now, than it was in 21,22, and early 23.

It could all crash tomorrow, we really don't know or we would all be rich.

Some experts I follow are saying interest rates will be back in the 3s in a couple of years. Who knows. I'm glad I have mine at 3% and I plan on keeping it til I die for my son to have a head start in life. This house has tripled in value in 5yrs. I've seen them drop to almost nothing twice in my life. It can happen again. You would think it would happen soon with people financing over priced vehicles and houses and high priced apartments, cost of living. It wouldn't surprise me a bit if it all crashed within a year. Remember the 2008 crash happened in days. These houses were 80k from 2008 to 2017. Now the same house is 300k

Lockjaw, i dont understand how but people are still keeping up. Still paying $75 for a meal at a mexican restuarant, still buying their kids $400 baseball bats. I keep thinking we will see a noticable change, but it just aint happening. The beach is more crowded right now than ive ever seen it. I dont know for sure where all the money is coming from but people just keep spending it like theres plenty

No it is not. You can hope for it, but that doesnt mean it is going to happen. It's not going to crash until the fed quits printing money and the US returns to a balanced or cost cutting annual budget. Neither or which is going to happen if past experience and the players involved have anything to say about it. I've been expecting it to crash for the past 4 yrs and they just continue to kick the can down the road and fire up the printing presses when needed. I honestly don't think they ever turn them off anymore. Too many of the people in charge are making too much money with the way things are now. I'm quickly becoming convinced now that it'll rock on until something big happens on the world stage. Heck, I'm thinking about moving my stuff back into the stock market.

I've always wondered who all of these people are that can afford $500K houses that they're building one after another around here......I get that some folks can afford it but not subdivision after subdivision full of them....I'm guessing there's a lot of debt that can barely be paid for

Some new neighborhoods down here are going straight to rentals.

Well if you are a hot woman, you can do only fans and make a mint. I watch alot of youtube since i punted cable years ago, and there is this girl on there that isn't even particularly attractive and she said in one of her shorts that she has 38,000 followers that pay her $10 a month. That is $380K a month for putzing around doing dumb videos. It's not even nudity.

That's how they do it. They trade their privacy for an online life. No one worries about paying $10 a month. Look at Whistling Diesel. He's a complete dumb A, yet people follow him because he does stupid crap like buy a brand new Lambo and then destroying it by driving it offroad. I saw some short with him destroying a G wagon the other day.

My neice posts on Tiktok, she has people contact her all the time about modeling clothes and pay her. You get a big online following, and you can make a mint, but the rest of us working stiff people who make the world run, we don't.

You could probably do tree cutting video's and post them on youtube and make $. Heck there are guys that do free landscaping on over grown properties for free, just to put the video on youtube and they get paid more for that then if they just cut it the legit way. Not only that, they get equipment companies that supply them with their equipment, I am sure heavily discounted or free, just to get more exposure.

I have a friend down in Auburn, he bought a bobcat with a forestry kit and a mulching head and he stays covered up. I bet he could video it and make triple what he makes right now.

There's a lot of wealth being passed from the baby boomer generation to their kids and I'm sure that has something to do with people being able to afford the houses.

I plan on doing tree cutting videos soon. When my son starts working with me full time. We shall see on the $$$$ part of it. I know alot of people are interested in it. Im just not interested in what it takes to get it on the web. My son is though

That seems to be the new thing. I don't see how those stay nice. I never had a renter that took care of my rental properties the way I would have or did, when I lived in them.

"Youll own nothing and be happy about it"

Check this trend out. I have been looking for a lake home on smith for a couple of years. I figure waiting on the crash has cost me a couple hundred grand.