Thursday, August 16, 2012

Trump: Now is the Time to Buy a House

Donald Trump tweets:
Donald J. Trump ‏@realDonaldTrumpNow is the time to buy a house if you can DIRECTLY from a bank. They want to get rid of all their foreclosures.
Trump is likely correct here, but in addition to deals on foreclosures,  interest rates are near record lows. Long-term rates will go much higher. If you buy a house now, be sure to lock in a fixed interest rate for as long as you can.

9 comments:

  1. The idea of purchasing a foreclosure home sounds like a great deal except the sky rocketing property taxes and homeowner association costs. In the real world logic dictates as home prices fall so should the property taxes; this is not the case in the union controlled counties of the US. Why anchor yourself to a piece of property so that the taxing authorities can further milk you to death. Just my two cents.

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    1. The locality I reside in allowed property taxes to Triple from 2002 to 2007 due to much higher property valuations. They added city staff, consultants, grew a corrupt(poorly performing) public school system that takes up 36 percent of the budget. Erected a state of the art police station, the list goes on. When property valuations fell 'mildly' in 2009 they would not allow their addiction to more money to moderate, they raised the annual tax rate to actually receive more tax money. Property valuations are again rising, so with the now higher tax rate, unless the city next year reduces it, property owners will see much higher tax bills. The saying you never really own real property (even if paid off) is very true in today's AMERIKA, if you don't pay local taxing authorities their 'tribute', they take your property. Finally, it is a fallacy to believe that getting politics away from a Macro Federal level to states, localities will solve issues of unaccountability, I have found City Council's(local governing bodies) as corrupt and inept as they come.

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    2. The theory is not that local politics is less corrupt, if anything they are more corrupt. The theory is that local politics is orders of magnitude easier to change if/when that corruption appears.

      Additionally if local politicians get too out of line they will have to fear for their own safety, the safety of their families and of their property as angry neighbors with torches/pitchforks live literally next door. At a federal level there is much less concern over this.

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  2. Marc Faber has been talking about it quite a lot too. I've heard him mentioning several times that you can buy a house for less money in Atlanta or Phoenix than you can in Thailand.

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  3. Advise from Trump to buy a house? No vested interest there.

    I think he has been saying that for decades.

    Trump's "wealth" comes from decades of money printing, & his ability to play the politics of housing (NYC, Atlantic City,) and the unions.

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  4. With Soros dumping financial stock and buying gold, this market whore (Trump)tells us to jump to the banks? You know what they say about suckers. Buy gold and silver, over time they will buy more than the crap from the banks.

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  5. I agree that with home building being at historic lows for many years now that it is likely we have bottomed out in housing. Still, I wouldn't treat it like a gold rush either. There is still a lot of "shadow inventory" out there to be worked off which will keep the lid on rising prices for some time, and interest rates are indeed cheap but it isn't that easy to get a mortgage so I would not expect a buying frenzy any time soon. Also, I disagree that you necessarily need to lock-in the low interest rates right now. With the federal government finances as poor as they are and the economy as weak as it is, I don't see the FED raising rates much for the foreseeable future. I would be surprised if by 2015 we are beyond 2%.

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    1. If they don't raise rates, inflation will hit even harder. All the more reason to defer payment, with a locked in interest rate.

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  6. Unless you can find a steal in forclosure, I would not buy a house. When priced in gold and silver, home values will plummet as rates rise.

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