Is that house really a bargain?

If anybody was surprised by how much trouble the US housing debacle cost Wall Street investors and foreign investors alike, and they didn’t see it coming – they weren’t using common sense and or they are just plain stupid. Einstein’s’ law of gravity stated what goes up, must come down. To sit and watch home prices double across the US in just a few years, and not think they would correct themselves is akin to watching my kids play on my homes’ roof and not expect them to fall off and break an arm or leg. Bottom line, if you overvalue something, you only trick yourself and those stupid enough to believe you for so long, then the market will bear its ugly head and tell you what it’s really worth.

There are reports everywhere, of the bargains you can now find in real estate in some major markets like Phoenix, San Diego, Las Vegas, Miami, Tampa, and other major cities. Home prices are down 20% and more the stories shout. What they don’t shout is that they are just edging back to what they should be, when you consider the amount of people that can reasonably afford them without ballooning ARM’s and other gimmicks that made some people temporarily rich, and others moveback to sanity and buy or rent what they can really afford on their measly paychecks.

So, are they really great deals or are they just average deals with more bargains to come? My advice, everything out there is still overvalued and the true deals are hard to find. These are simply paper deals where some moron bought something at some astronomical price they couldn’t afford, and are taking a paper loss in trying to sell it. What should you be concerned with? Surely not with what they (the homeowner or bank) claim they will lose on the deal, rather what the home should have cost in the first place compared to what they are selling it for now.