{"id":14942,"date":"2011-03-28T09:00:07","date_gmt":"2011-03-28T16:00:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/seattlebubble.com\/blog\/?p=14942"},"modified":"2012-02-21T18:11:54","modified_gmt":"2012-02-22T02:11:54","slug":"buy-low-sell-high-is-it-possible-to-buy-low-today","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/seattlebubble.com\/blog\/2011\/03\/28\/buy-low-sell-high-is-it-possible-to-buy-low-today\/","title":{"rendered":"Buy Low, Sell High. Is it possible to buy low today?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Buy low, sell high.<\/strong><\/p>\n

It’s the #1 rule of investing. While buying a home is more than just an investment, it is the largest purchase most people will make in their lives, and even if you aren’t hoping to make a pile of easy money buying real estate, it’s still good to follow basic investment principles when you buy your house.<\/p>\n

One of the simplest reasons that it was obviously not<\/em> a good time to buy during the housing bubble was that it was impossible to “buy low.” Pretty much everyone<\/em> who bought a home between about 2005 and 2008 bought high<\/em>. Some people bought higher than others<\/a>, but virtually nobody was able to buy low.<\/p>\n

Now that home prices are down 20% to 40% around the Puget Sound, is it finally time to buy low? If you jump into the market today, you’ll certainly be buying lower<\/strong> than pretty much any time in the last five or six years, but is that the same as buying low, or is it just catching a falling knife?<\/p>\n

As we discussed a few months back during Big Picture Week<\/a>, when you compare Seattle-area home prices to local economic fundamentals, it’s pretty difficult to make the case that prices are “low” just yet. However, your chances of finding a below-market deal<\/a> in today’s market are many times greater than any time during the bubble buying frenzy.<\/p>\n

Personally, I think it is possible<\/em> for some<\/em> home buyers today to “buy low.” Note that this doesn’t make it suddenly a “great time to buy,” since I still believe that most<\/em> buyers are probably not<\/em> buying low. However, I do think it’s possible, which is something that I really couldn’t say for the past five years.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Buy low, sell high. It’s the #1 rule of investing. While buying a home is more than just an investment, it is the largest purchase most people will make in their lives, and even if you aren’t hoping to make a pile of easy money buying real estate, it’s still good to follow basic investment…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[206],"tags":[292,761],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-14942","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-features","tag-bottom-calling","tag-falling-knife"],"yoast_head":"\nBuy Low, Sell High. 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