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Comment by dangwhy | Hacker News Reader

There goes my hope of buying a home. I was really hoping for a recession and housing market downturn. Stuff is still very expensive at the grocery store. I guess I still have my job despite layoffs, so I'll thank biden for that.

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You are trying to time the market. Don't do that. When you are financially capable of buying a house, do it. Don't get take a variable rate mortgage. If you are stable on a 5 year fixed rate, the rest doesn't matter. Up, down, sideways, whatever.

If you time the stock market wrong without leverage, worst case you lose all your money.

Time the housing market wrong and you could rapidly have sizeable negative wealth. Toss in a forced sale in a divorce or something and you've lost both all the money you ever had but also the money you ever will up until bankruptcy filing after which no one but absolute sharks will rent you a place either. At that point MonkeyMalarkey will not be around to point you to the best dumpster to sleep behind...

In the first para, you are optimizing for expected value by not timing the market. In the second para you should not be optimizing for expected value but rather assurity you don't end up sleeping behind the dumpster, so the advice may not be transferrable.

> 5 year fixed rate,

Or just buy it outright, with that kind of leverage.

You have entirely sidestepped the issue at hand. What you bring up is a different issue. Is it possible for you to stay on point?

Not sure how its a different issue. Wouldn't a recession have made the home prices affordable.

Your point is what? Biden somehow predicted the future and claimed we are not in recession. Criticism was valid when he made that statement. Not sure why current news will make his previous statement right.

No, that's never guaranteed. Housing is a speculative asset with consistent demand from both investors and residents. A recession may slow the growth of prices, but there's no guarantee they would drop.

The issue at hand (that I originally brought up) is that a lot of people claimed Biden was wrong to say we are not in a recession. Those people are wrong. I said as much in my original post.

Not sure i understand your logic. How can you take something from today and go back and apply to something that was said months ago. Those ppl were not wrong when the statement was made.

We weren’t in a recession then and aren’t in one now. At any rate, your responses were a sidestepping of the issue I brought up and when pointed out to you your response wasn’t to acknowledge this.

Ah got it. Yes I acknowledge that my response wasn't related to your comment.

> Not sure how its a different issue. Wouldn't a recession have made the home prices affordable

Hypothetically, once people are absolutely forced to sell or are foreclosed on.

Any current slow or drop in home prices has mostly been because interest rates have driven monthly mortgage payments too high and reduced the pool of buyers. Otherwise inflation would be driving home prices up too.

Prices of houses are coming down due to interest rates. But a rise in interest rates doesn't mean an automatic recession.

> Prices of houses are coming down due to interest rates.

Not where I live. I see markdowns of 10k on a 600k homes. Nothing really changed.

That is a function of your local market. There are always going to be places that have faster price declines than others.

Examples would be useful, rather than handwaving.

Taking a look at the home value history for each...

Random home in Southern CA: https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/1414-N-Center-St-Orange-C...

Random home in Boulder CO: https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/175-Gold-Run-Rd-Boulder-C...

Random home in Edmond OK: https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/7105-Robey-Dr-Edmond-OK-7...

Random home in Jacksonville FL: https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/7226-Nottinghamshire-Dr-J...

I could go on, but I think the trend mentioned (~10% drop) is consistent across the US.

Take a look at historical prices, if they didn't drop during 08 they're probably not going to drop now.

> Prices of houses are coming down due to interest rates.

Not a lot; median sale price nationally dropped $300 from $468k to $467,700 from Q3 2022 to Q4 2022.

What is the drop from the peak and yoy?

> What is the drop from the peak and yoy?

YoY is an increase of $44,100 from Q4 2021, and Q3 2022 was the peak, so $300 is both the quarterly and from-peak drop.

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