Are Boise Home Prices At the Bottom
When will Boise home prices start going up? Is the Boise housing market at the bottom?
This is an addendum to what I wrote below. I waffled about the questions above. The following article has pushed me to believe that indeed the bottom of home prices in Boise is very close. Notice in the bottom paragraph of the article that Idaho is amoung the states where foreclosures are accellerating, both in numbers and processing time. This is bound to stabalize prices and the purpose for the banks is to cause values to rise. My kids just pulled the trigger and just bought a rental home. Up until now my advice has been to wait. They are in the process of buying a nice home for about $50,000 that they already have rented for $700 per month. That is an incredible rate of return. Click here to read this article.
My original Post:
I get these questions about Boise area home prices quite often from both Boise home buyers and home sellers or people thinking about buying or selling a home in South West Idaho. Home prices in some areas and price ranges in Ada and Canyon counties are down 50% and in even 60% from the peak of the market. I recently received a Real Estate advertisement in the form of a newsletter from one Boise area real estate brokerage that heavily advertises suggesting that we are about to turn up. The statistics are that pending sales are up for the last two months and the number of homes for sale are dropping both in Boise and in the nation.
On 1-12-2011 Diana Orlick on her CNBC real estate block said this. “I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: In housing, prices lag sales, on the way up and on the way down. Recently we’ve been getting a lot of bullish news on home sales, with both pending and existing home sales up toward the end of the year and expectations that December will continue that trend.” Orlick also said “Both Zillow and CoreLogic reported home prices down just over 5 percent in November year over year, and the price drops are accelerating month to month (of course this is the slowest season).”
Our local MLS statistics are showing close to the same. Ada county distress sales peaked last month with close 45% of closings being foreclosures or short sales. We are also seeing many sellers either drop their prices to short sale and foreclosure prices or they are taking them off the market. Go to the following to see all Boise short sales and then change the price range, areas, or other criteria on the right and take a look at the prices. Create an account and save your favorites and come back often and watch the trend.
I am no fortune teller. I am not buying homes thinking that they are going to make tens of thousands in a mater of months but I can’t help think that we are not getting close to a bottom. Finding the exact bottom or top is futile. If I were a genius I would have sold my house in 2005 and rented until now and would be buying now. I can’t help think that in 5 years many people are not going to be looking back thinking they should have sold their home now and moved up. High end homes have fallen further than lower priced homes. Click on this to see all the Boise Forecloses home for sale.