There's an article written by Eral Swift in today's Parade Magazine that's definitely worth reading. Read the entire article HERE.

"How the housing market looks in the coming year will largely depend on who is doing the looking: For many Americans, this will be a terrific time to buy a house, even as others struggle to hold on to their homes, and thousands—perhaps hundreds of thousands—succumb to foreclosure."

"Sellers will have a tougher time closing a deal and may have to settle for less as prices around the country stagnate or slide. Mortgages will be tougher to come by. And builders—already competing with a fat inventory of existing homes—will see demand for their wares further erode."

"A good piece of the current slump was just inevitable: Most experts had predicted that the spectacular run-up in home prices from 2003 to 2005 simply couldn’t last—and, in some places, had soared well beyond the reach of most buyers and common sense."

"The superheated markets of those years—Las Vegas, Phoenix and much of California, for example—are now nosing into corrections."

"Mind you, real estate is local, and parts of the country will actually see appreciation—a fact that is masked by gloomy national statistics."

"With fewer qualified buyers on the scene, an already-fat housing inventory will take longer to slim down, Lereah says, (chief economist for the National Association of Realtors). How much longer? Months, he suggests. Years, Kenneth Rosen worries, (a professor of real estate and urban economics at the University of California, Berkeley)."

"If anyone stands to gain from the mess, it’s buyers with good credit, who should be able to navigate the lending straits without hassle, find plenty of inventory to choose from and have the luxury of time to mull their purchases."

Labels: Bay Area Real Estate, DataQuick, Housing Inventory, Months Supply, Real Estate Cycles, San Francisco Chronicle