When will the housing market bottom out?

Question

When will the housing market bottom out?

Answer 1

Everyone is asking this. My guess is 2018. Demographics suggest that baby boomers are going to want to sell their houses as they retire in the next decade, adding to the glut. The children of the boomers will start to enter the housing market in a serious way in 2018, and after some of the supply is taken up and after some children of boomers move into their parents' dwellings, there will be folks looking for new houses. By 2015 housing developments that were started and then abandoned will have been bulldozed or destroyed creating a vacuum that will have to filled by new houses and then the market will start to recover in a serious way, perhaps aided by then-matured technologies that will make houses "greener."

Answer 2

When there is more demand for homes than homes available. With all the foreclosures, it may take some time to sell them all and get the market back to "normal". Manhattan has never had an issue because of how popular housing is there, an apt goes up for sale and its sold within weeks at the most. Very different than what is happening in the rest of the US.  

Answer 3

First off it will bottom out on your street at a different time than another street in your same city!  It will certainly bottom out in your city at a different time that other parts of your same state.  Some parts of this country are booming right now.  I drove through west texas last week and houses are being built and sold there in a very brisk way.

All real estate is very local (since you can not easily move a house).

If you can assure yourself that your area is fundamentally sound- that is that people still want to live there, then I would not wait to buy.  I would shop around and educate myself about the local market and see what it is that I want and how much it is really worth.

Timing any kind of market is a losing bet.