Downtown Toledo Skyline

Surprise! This Realtor thinks it’s a great time for you to buy.  Really?  Yes, really!

Some prospective homeowners who should be buying right now are simply nervous and indecisive, and that, more than calculated reasoning, leads to inaction.  They hear about unemployment problems (even when their own jobs may be secure); they read in the newspaper that Toledo is “the 8^th most miserable city” (even though we all know better); it’s February, and they’d be better off waiting until the spring market (Really? When more buyers come out of hibernation and compete for the same properties, thereby driving prices up); and what if the market hasn’t bottomed out yet? (People worried about the stock market as recently as 2010 when the Dow Jones Industrial average was around 10,000, but it is now nearing 13,000). “Affordability” is a measure of median housing prices relative to median incomes in an area, and these skeptics ignore the fact that Toledo consistently ranks in the top 5 most affordable cities in the nation, as recently reported by CNN: http://money.cnn.com/2012/02/15/real_estate/housing_affordability/index.htm?hpt=hp_t3.

The National Association of Realtors reported that affordability hit its highest point since they began tracking such figures nearly 20 years ago.  They claim that 75.9% of all homes were affordable to families with the median income.  But wait, there’s more!  Those are national numbers, and we need to remember that “all real estate is local” and the NW Ohio/SE Michigan numbers are even more attractive.

So, buy now?  That’s my enthusiastic recommendation to my own kids, especially at today’s mortgage rates. More house for the money; lower monthly payments; less interest paid over the life of the loan – that’s affordability.