Home buying

I'm thinking that if you are in the market to buy a house you are one of the luckiest people around these days. There are simply no buyers!! The sellers are aware of this. The brokers are aware of this. Are you???

My only hope is that you either have really good credit, or you have a stockpile of cash ready for that down payment. Of course, people with large stockpiles of cash usually do have good credit. This is important because with the credit crisis we're currently in, the banks have taken a totally different posture than even a few months ago. You hear about the losses at CitiBank and Merril. It's simply amazing how much money they've lost by giving loans to people who shouldn't have had them. Or not even being the loan originator, but having some investments bundled in with those types of mortgages that were probably sold and re-sold.

At any rate, if you're that guy who has been holding out and has good credit, and a nice bunch of cash for a down payment on a house, you're seriously in the cat-bird seat. We've just finished the biggest real estate boom in history, and a big bust has just started. Will it be the biggest bust in history? That's your big question. If you think not, you should buy now. You will have seen some gains in the 1 year since the peak. However, I don't think it's over. I say wait another year and you'll simply be giddy with choices.