Eeeeesh
April 15, 2008
Trying to find a house from 2000 miles away is NOT easy. Even with the internet, an incredibly gracious mother-in-law and a fabulous (repeat FABULOUS) realtor (thanks for all your help Mike!), it is still proving to be quite difficult. Factor in proximity to elementary school, enough room for 3 (soon to be 4 kiddos) and safety of neighborhood and the equation gets increasingly complicated. Como se dice en Espanol “I’m ready to quit looking and live in a van down by the river (or bay)?”
Murf
April 15th, 2008 at 6:48 pm
Well…for what it’s worth, I hope you did your research before you decided to buy because housing prices have the potential to drop a lot more. Check out the article on Slate I linked to at my blog - it refers to California, but I don’t imagine Florida is much different.
Brandon
April 15th, 2008 at 7:43 pm
Scary. In fact, we are not buying right now. The realtor who we worked with basically told us that it’s a renters market and that he expected prices to drop another 25%-35% in the next 12 months. The market is so depressed that realtors are being used to broker rental agreements. And apparently there have been 3 realtors in the Tampa area who have recently committed suicide. Really sad on a lot of levels.
Murf
April 16th, 2008 at 5:25 am
I didn’t know it was THAT bad. Makes sense to rent because if the prices drop another 25% you’ll save thousands of dollars in the long run. I imagine there will be some repos that come on the market that you can low ball and get a pretty good deal on if you keep your eyes open. Apparently foreclosures are coming on the market faster than the banks can unload them so I expect with the passing of time, that they will be desperate to sell.