Originally posted by @Diane G.:
I am thinking I won't have to wait for more than 1-2 years... Your thoughts?
Most of my coworkers, especially those in the early 30s, have bought and have a mortgage that is $10K in monthly PITI... Tough.....
Any job loss would wipe them out, or even without a job loss, it is very heavy on the financials and leave them no room to save for retirement, or kids college...
I just dont see how it is all sustainable... Maybe I am the pessimistic...
What you are saying is true, and of course real estate can't go up forever, but here arr some of my thoughts: I have learned some very hard lessons through years with investing. Here is what I had to learn the hard way:
1.) Know that people over fascinate with picking tops or bottoms of markets for whatever reason. The traders or investers in any market that make the most money don't worry about tops or bottoms they just focus and catching the meat of the moves. Statistics show that when investors attempt to pick bottoms or tops they loose money over 95% of the time (do you want be one of these people?). You only here about the few people that picked the top or bottom of markets at the right time and they are hailed as heros when all they were was lucky. You will never here about the thousands of others that missed timed the market and lost big.
2.) All indicators that are used to access the market predict nothing, they are just tell you was has happened in the past and manifest the market action after current info has been plugged in. Predicting the future is near impossible. Volume or OBV may be exceptions here but those do not really apply to real estate.
3.) The most important point- Remember if you over fascinate about the tops or bottoms of market and you sit on the sidelines the gains you miss out on will far exceed that potential loss that you fear if you get a few trades or deals caught up at the top of the market. It's such a shame that what we fear takes 80% action dominance over what we hope for. Most of the time reality shows us that with investing or trading this 80% control by our fears is what causes failure. Actually mistakes cause failure significantly less often then the actions your fear will cause you take. So it's not about being right or wrong all the time. It's about catching the meat of market moves. If you wrong and you do few bad deals at the top of market, but yet the meat of your deals were done when the market was heading up.... You will still be ok! On balance of probability you would be a lot better off continuing to make deals and money until a top comes then to wait it out and miss out. Gains missed out on are the same as gains lost at the top because you got caught. They are both losses, but for some reason we over fascinate and our controlled more by the what we preceive to be the "bad" outcome.
Don't make the same mistakes I did. Good Luck!
