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The best time to buy a home

By Walter Updegrave, Money Magazine senior editor

November 4, 2008 8:11 pm

No one knows when we’ll reach a bottom, but you can get a great bargain, if you shop around.

Questions: Given all the foreclosures and other problems in the housing market and the economy, do you think this is a good time for someone to buy a house? Or would I be better off waiting for the housing market to recover? —Mari, San Francisco

Answers: If you’re asking me to predict when the housing market will hit bottom and when prices are likely to start climbing again, I’m sorry, but I can’t help you. My housing crystal ball is on the blink.

I can tell you, though, that at this point we’re still looking at one bleak house scenario.

If anything, the latest price statistics suggest that the market is still falling. The Standard & Poor’s/Case-Shiller Home Price Index for 20 large metropolitan areas was down 16.6% in August compared to its level a year ago. That’s more than the index was down for the year ending in July (16.3%) and in June (15.9%). National Association of Realtor stats for September also show a decline.

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Don’t time the market

But I don’t think all this necessarily means that you should put off buying until certain prices have bottomed out, assuming you’re planning to live in your house for, say, at least five years as opposed to flipping it.

Why? Well, for one thing I don’t think it’s possible to time the housing market any more than it is to time the stock market. Sure, you might be able to get a somewhat better deal by postponing your purchase. On the other hand, it’s unrealistic to think that you’re going to be able to catch the market just as prices are ready to rebound.

Buying a house isn’t something you can do at a moment’s notice. You’ve got to find the house you really want, settle on a price and get your financing. Your chances of timing all this to coincide with the market trough - even if you could call it - are pretty much nil. Besides, even when prices do eventually start to rise, no one knows how quickly (or slowly) they’ll climb.

Read the rest of the article here.

photo credit: IamSAM.

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photo credit: RailRavag3r

With Gov. Paterson projecting cuts in state school budgets over the next year (2009) the Averill Park school board has already met to discuss what can be cut from the current budget in case Averill Park is one of the schools facing aid cuts.

The school board association’s director of governmental relations, Dave Little, will speak on the state budget crisis and its implications at Averill Park High School on Nov. 6, at a 7:30 p.m.

From the Troy Record Nov. 1 edition ->

AVERILL PARK - Averill Park Central School District superintendent Dr. Jo Moccia warned the School Board that the district could face severe budget cuts before the school year’s end in light of the statewide fiscal crisis and called for an immediate freeze on spending, non-essential purchases and hiring to stem the potential red ink.

“We don’t have the money to carry on the way we are going,” Moccia told the board. “How do you want to proceed?”

During a lengthy discussion of the state’s looming fiscal crisis and its implications for school districts across the state, Moccia also requested that a “stakeholder group” be convened immediately representing all elements of the school district’s broader community, including taxpayers without students presently in the district schools and the local business community.

The group would look for savings in the current fiscal year’s $52.8 million operating budget, if an anticipated mid-year reduction in state aid to the district comes to pass. In addition, Moccia is expecting what could be as much as $1.8 million reduction in next year’s state aid in order to hold the line on tax levies.

She urged the school board to “brainstorm” on the question of “what are the things really essential to our core program, and what are the things that are really good but that we can do without.”

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