[eastbay]

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My question is for the people in the buy now camp is what do you see that could drive the prices higher in the next few years?


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For the record, I am not in any "buy now" camp. But I am also not in the "do not buy now" camp, either. In every market there are good entry points and bad entry points for someone looking for a primary residence. And while I wouldn't necessarily say that there's *never* a time to be in the "do not buy now" camp, I would say it's certainly not now in some markets. Not when there are homes being sold at 40% off of the highs in the market. In some places, in some categories, there are *already* historically large corrections in place, now.

You're asking what catalyst might drive prices higher, and I already named one: where median prices are well over $417k, a restoration of the jumbo market could drive prices higher.

But I think another point is that there doesn't have to be any catalyst to drive prices higher when looking to buy a primary residence. There just has to be some reason to believe that you're not going to suffer significant losses in any particular entry point. In some regions, on some properties, I think that support is already in place.

eastbay