Your parents bought a home, right? Rest assured Millennials. What comes up will come down.

Your parents bought a home, right? Rest assured Millennials. What comes up will come down.

Source: Sacramento Bee

Millennials aged 23 to 38 made up the largest share, 39.1% of Golden State homebuyers in 2020, according to the California Association of Realtors®. It’s not always easy, especially in a state plagued by a housing shortage and affordability crisis, when the median price of a single-family house is $818,260 in May 2021.

But Real Estate Experts advise it’s not all “doom and gloom” if you set the right expectations and begin the process as soon as possible whether you want to own a home in five weeks to five years.

Buyer Fatigue: Yes, this is a real thing. If you are home buyer and have been bidding against people to buy a home, rest assured, what goes up will come down. In my opinion, we are on a 10-year cycle in Los Angeles housing prices and recessions. Many people (like house flippers) are treating housing as a commodity and when they treat housing like stocks, prices soar. Today we are flooded with homes done to the 9s but if interest rates go up, or if unemployment goes up, or any number of other potential factors, prices will come down and will be seeing short sales happen again. If we go into a recession again, which does happen on a regular basis (again my 10-year cycle observation), more affordable options will become available.

Patience + perseverance:  No agent would show me a house at 21. With very little in my pocket and writing many offers with various agents (literally no one would work with me as they thought I was too young and not real). Finally, I landed a house after many attempts in Echo Park. My first home at 24. It was tough and took a full time job and selling clothes on Ebay plus several roommates, but I did it. I bought in a down cycle. It was a short sale as we were in a recession.

Don’t want to wait for a recession?

Buy a home with sweat equity: Looking to buy a home now or once the market goes down? Don’t fall in love with the perfectly done home and consider the house that isn’t completely redone or the cheap fixer that investors will grab with all cash. Look for a home that needs work but that is livable. Those homes tend to sit on the market and may start at a crazy price but often eventually come down. Decide to buy a home and put some sweat equity in vs buying a home redone with someone else’s vision.

Whatever you decide to do, buy now or wait… never settle for remaining a renter especially in Los Angeles where rents tend to double every 10 years.