Five would be stretching it. Houston, while not seeing a huge run up in prices, has had an awful lot of building activity. Builders are being aggressive to move inventory, and that hurts resellers. There are a lot of foreclosures in the Houston area now as well.

At least the rent/mortgage ratio is much better in Houston, which helps for investing. Anyone who just runs and buys a property with reckless abandon because it’s on some list could join the thousands now suffering from “Flipper’s Remorse.”

I think the NAR is going to have to go with This must be the bottom, because how much worse can it get? Better buy now, before they’re all gone.

Makes ya’ wonder why they don’t just say: “Here are 5 places that would be great places to buy now”

It’s like they had to come up with 10, just to have 10.

Kind of a forced compliment along the lines of:
“Wow! You don’t sweat much for a fat girl!”

Better if they’d just kept it to 5, and said the other cities had a “great personality!”

If the MGM residences are nearly sold out- I’ll eat my hat.

There is a huge glut of properties on or near the Strip- with even more coming on by the minute. Projects like City Center insure that this market will remain glutted for some time to come.

The good investments in LV are few and far between at the moment- I would be extremely careful.

What’s even better is that they say “there are parts of the country where it makes sense to buy now.” This is basically half a step away from coming right out and saying that it does NOT make sense to buy unless you’re in one of those rare/unusual places… Now if they would just take that last half a step to the truth, and stick with it for ten years or so, they might regain a smidgen of credibility instead of being regarded as slimier and less trustworthy than used car salesmen.

I think she must’ve refied. “I could sell for a cheaper price, but I would shoot myself (financially).”

an even better statement: “Another owner on the street moved back to his native Singapore because he thought his children could get a better education there, his broker, Betty Chan, said.” :0

are you being funny? you read this post & want to know if you can get a good LV condo at investment price, so your rent = mortgage payment & would stay rented out most of the year?

My wife and I are looking for investment property. Ideally in the West somewhere as we live in SoCal. Now obviously I’m not going to “catch a falling knife”. I’m in no hurry to buy and will only do so when I feel the time is right, and that time is not yet.

Anyway, for Vegas real-estate I only hear about single family homes and residential condos. How are the condos doing near the strip, and the big new developments? I see the MGM residences are almost sold out, but it’s hard to get real data… it’s all just spin.

I’d love to be able to pick up a place near the strip that I can rent out most of the year and stay at once in a while. Any thoughts here?

“Joy Gillen, 60, a casino supervisor, has had her home on the market for nearly a year and a half. She initially listed the home at $597,000 then $539,900 and since refused to budge, even though she paid only $291,000 for it five years ago.”

from http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20071008/lf_nm/usa_housing_vegas_dc_3

It’s only my opinion, but here is how I’d answer the question: “When exactly is it NOT a good time to buy?”

I would say:

It’s always a great time to buy…

– at 2.5 x yearly income as a residence
– at 100 -120 x monthly rent as an investment rental
– at 60 – 70% of what I can ACTUALLY sell it for today as a “trade propety”
(not a rehab or fix and flip, but normal buy & sell trading)

Anything higher than that, and it is NOT a good time to buy that particular property.

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Heck, I might even buy a house in Vegas today at those numbers.

Naaaahhhhh. The pendulum has been pulled so far over to one side, that I’ll just wait until it swings the other way past “center.”

(Center being represented by the above factors & percentages)

Again… just my opinion.

I’m pretty sure that floor of 800 isn’t going to last through the winter.

AssetHunter,

Holy Moley! How can NAR keep a straight face while pumping that $^#%? I’d be embarassed.

& it brings up a great question a REAL reporter/journalist should ask a NAR shill in their next report. When exactly is it NOT a good time to buy? I wonder what they would say…

Rather than using even negative percentages to prove something is “great,” wouldn’t it just be easier to say:

“There is NO great place to buy a house right now. We recommend that you exercise that long forgotten American discipline of “delayed gratification” and multiply your “home ownership satisfaction” with a celebratory dinner and the thousands and thousands of dollars you’ll save by waiting a little bit.
Not to mention the added eventual benefit of living in a neighborhood not smothering in debt.”

Of course, that would just be… cRaZy!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
10 Cities Where It’s a Great Time to Buy

The real estate business may be facing a softening in sales, but there are parts of the country where it makes sense to buy now.

Forbes magazine examined current home sales patterns and sales projects in the country’s 40 largest real estate markets to identify these attractive markets.

Based on models that estimated 2008 housing inventory, sales rates, and turnover, the magazine compiled a list of markets that are experiencing price declines, but where buying looks attractive because there is likely to be an increase in sales in the near future.

Here are Forbes’ and Moody’s 10 most attractive markets, along with the median homes sales price and their price change from 2006.

Fort Worth, Texas: $156,500, 1.7 percent
Kansas City, Mo.: $157,700, -0.7 percent
Houston: $154,900, 1.4 percent
Cleveland: $128,700, -7.1 percent
Denver: $255,200, none
Long Island, N.Y.: $482,300, 1.7 percent
Washington, D.C.: $445,300, 0.3 percent
Orlando, Fla.: $265,100, -2.4 percent
Phoenix: $264,800, -2.7 percent
Las Vegas: $307,900, -3.6 percent

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And a personal comment, just to stay relative to the thread:

Vegas as “great” and “attractive” right now!?!?!??!

BBBWAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHA

Gotta love those REIC-sponsored spinmeisters at UCLA. (Why aren’t more people calling them out on this?)

Down at least 8% already (C-S showed 6.5% as of August, not Sept., and that doesn’t account for incentives or discounted new building leading resale prices) and they’re calling 20% total in 3-4 more years? Classic.