Mortgage News

If you're into bottom-fishing, now may be the time to start trolling for real estate. At least that's the advice of Michael Corbett, author of Before You Buy: The Homebuyer's Handbook for Today's Market. "I'm pretty comfortable saying that five years from now, people are going to be saying, 'Damn, if I had just bought in 2011,' " said Corbett, who is also host of the "Mansions & Millionaires" segment on the syndicated TV show Extra. "Prices are bumping along the bottom and rates are really low," he said. "When you have those two together, you have the perfect buying opportunity." Housing prices may not have hit rock bottom, Corbett acknowledged. But he thinks that people who wait to find the market's bottom are likely to miss out on current low rates.

And rates can be every bit as important to the cost of a deal as price. You might think you can snag a great deal by lying in wait, hoping that the owner of a $500,000 listing will get desperate enough to accept $450,000. But if rates rise 1% during the time you wait, you'll end up shooting yourself in the foot. Assuming you finance $400,000 of the purchase price of that home, the 1% difference between a 5% and a 6% loan will cost you more than $90,000 over the life of a 30-year loan. "It's hard to tell where the bottom of a market is, until prices start going up," said Dianne Patton, a consumer real estate specialist with Coldwell Banker Real Estate. "But the stars are aligned for buyers right now." Source: LATimes.com