Homebuying Tip: Get a Home Inspection
In our continuing effort to help you be as informed and knowledgable as possible about the home buying process, we offer this important advice.
Get a Home Inspection.
The last thing you want to discover after you have bought a home is that you have purchased a "money pit". By "money pit", we are referring to a home that is full of major defects not readily seen which could end up draining you of all available financial resources.
Save yourself time in possible future litigation and renovation by hiring a licensed, professional home inspector to inspect the home before you buy it. If any major problems are found, it will steer you away from a bad decision and/or it could help you negotiate a better price for the home.
Better to know up front if the heating and cooling system is not working efficiently, or the water heater has a leak, than to find out after the movers have already pulled out of the driveway.
If there is any area of the home buying process that you have a question about and would like for us to post a tip about it here, leave us a comment or question below and we'll cover that for you in a future post.
Housing Continues to Plunge
Housing construction plunged to the lowest level in nearly a decade last month as the housing industry continued to struggle with a severe slowdown.
Across the country, the median home price is now $219,000, down 2.7 percent from a year ago.
Construction of new homes and apartments plunged by 14.3 percent in January, pushing total activity down to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1.408 million units.
The weather was blamed for part of the setback. November and December had been unusually mild while more normal winter weather returned to much of the country in January, depressing building activity.
Vacant Homes and U.S.'s Economic Outlook
Amid brightening hopes that the U.S. housing market is stabilizing, some economists are zeroing in on a piece of data that could augur badly for the consensus view: the homeowner vacancy rate.
That figure, an often-overlooked measure of how many homes for sale in the country are empty, has climbed to its highest level since the Census Bureau began tracking it four decades ago. Last week, the bureau said that in the final three months of 2006 there were about 2.1 million vacant homes for sale.
That brought the national homeowner vacancy rate to 2.7%, up from 2.0% a year earlier. Before 2006, the number had never risen above 2.0%. Like the housing economy more broadly, the measure varies by region: The South had a homeowner vacancy rate of 3.0%, the Midwest had a rate of 2.9%, the West had a 2.4% rate and the Northeast had a rate of 2.0%.
The report, which usually gets little attention, sparked fresh concerns about the housing market. Goldman Sachs economist Jan Hatzius concluded in a report last Monday that rising vacancies signal that excess housing supply continues to grow — and that new construction has to decline further this year, even after a 13% decline in new home starts in 2006.
Read the complete story here…
Housing Market Slower but No Recession Coming
Housing activity has slowed from recent years but the dragdown should not lead to a recession, mortgage finance company Freddie Mac said in its monthly economic outlook. "Any risks the housing contraction could spark an economy-wide recession are fading fast. After subtracting 1.2 percentage points from GDP growth in the third and fourth quarters of 2006, the drag from further declines in construction spending should peter out toward mid year," it said.
Freddie Mac said inventories of new homes are higher than reported due to cancellations of sales contracts. Inventory buildup is also understated due to homeowner vacancies of condos, it said. "Housing activity is stabilizing at levels well below recent years," it said.
The gap between supply and demand may not be sufficiently narrowed until late 2007 as home prices will likely remain on the higher end, the housing finance giant said.
Read the complete story here…
We'd love to hear from you… leave us your comment about the article.
Housing Crunch Isn't Over Yet
Housing is proving to be one of the biggest wild cards in the economy in 2007 as analysts are deeply divided about whether the worst in the downturn is over or there is much more pain to go.
Only 9% of economists say the housing decline ended in 2006, according to a USA TODAY survey of 55 economists. Another 42% said the downturn will end in the first half of the year, and 45% said housing will bottom out in the second half. "This is one of those hot-button issues," says Christopher Rupkey, chief financial economist at Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi. He estimates the downturn ended last year. "I don't know why people are so pessimistic."
When housing bottoms out is key for the economy. Thus far, the fallout has been small. The economy grew at a faster pace in 2006 than in 2005 even though sales of previously owned homes fell 8.2%, the biggest drop in 17 years, the National Association of Realtors says.
Read the complete story here…
Leave us a comment about the article. We'd love to hear from you!
