What do you want first the good news or the “other” news? OK, the good news first.

The good news is that existing home sales were reported to be up in February for the first time in 7 months as reported by the NAR today at 10AM. Purchases increased 2.9% to an annual rate of 5.03 million.

The rest of the news
Home prices fell 8.7 percent nationally from February 2007. This is the steepest drop in some 40 years of record keeping.

There is a growing sentiment among the professionals I’m talking with that the end of this year will be the bottom of the slide. That doesn’t mean that you should wait to get into something until this winter. I also want to point out that I’m talking about 2-4 unit multifamilies, starter investments if you will. Commercial investments are on a different track and are affected by different factors which I talk about in other posts.

There are lots of deals out there right now and I’ll recommend what I always recommend which is that you find and negotiate something where the numbers work and where you plan on holding the property for the longterm. There is only ever a brief window of time that one particular property, the one that you want, is on the market. When you find something you should act. Timing the real estate market to a within a matter of months simply doesn’t work.