We bought a beautiful brand new home in a tony suburb of Indianapolis. After moving from the expensive San Diego region, our real estate dollars went much further in the less desirable mid west. Our new home was luxurious in comparison with our smaller attached home in California.
Comparable homes to ours in New York City sell for $2,000,000.00 to $3,000,000.00. Our purchase price was nowhere near that amount.
Folks today are presented with the best interest rate environment in over 50 years. That’s right, you can get a home loan for as little as 4%. Compare that with the late 1970’s when mortgage rates were upwards of 12%. With those historically low mortgage rates, shouldn’t everyone buy a home?
A quick google search, “time v money” turned up 6.3 BILLION results. Obviously, I’m not the only one thinking about this topic. In fact, it looks like billions of individuals are dealing with these same quandries.
Actually, I am not miserable, nor do I have “real” problems, but only minor stresses and inconveniences accompanying our cross country move. We are officially “on the road” with no address and no final date of arrival in our new land.
We have the largest real estate brokerage company in the area with 50 agents. Usually at this time of year we have 15-20 homes that are under contract. Presently we have 3, all listed under $225,o00. I’ve never seen a market like this one before. We are actually getting a bit concerned.
How much you pay for your home is significantly influenced by the mortgage rate. When shopping for a home, buyers typically look at the home prices. For example, your price range might be $200,000 to $225,000 (of course not in NYC or LA), but the cost to you actually varies depending on your financing options.
Even though my family was in the real estate business, I’ve bought and sold investment property and our own home many times, and my neighbor is going to sell his own home, we are using a real estate agent.
Barbara Friedberg Personal Finance© 2023, a Wealth-Media Company, DISCLOSURE – PRIVACY – TERMS