I figured it bears repeating given inflation, rising interest rates, and current blast-off of the market, especially in the locations we are looking in.A bit about us that may be somewhat helpful:• We are first-time homebuyers with no debt to our names (thankfully!)

With inflation and prices going up on everything I think you would be better off purchasing something that is already built in the same area or a smaller rehab project. 

Last year we built 900k houses, but we added 3million people (so if there’s an average of 3 people in every house we added zero inventory last year…)https://usafacts.org/articles/...In the last 8 years we built 7 million new homes (900k per year, ps we built 50% more per year in the 70’s) BUT, there were 12 million new households, so we built 5 million less homes than we needed over the last 9 years. https://www.cnbc.com/2021/09/1...If we secure the borders, stop taking in immigrants, convince millennials they shouldn’t have kids, convince young people that college is a waste of money and they should go in to the trades building us homes as the older workers retire, get a handle on inflation without raising interest rates and convince people like the poster above that they should sell their home with the 2.5% mortgage and buy a new home with a 4.5% interest rate, the inventory problem will take care of itself. :-)Oh yeah, and kick all the local and state governments out of power that won’t let anyone build in their neighborhood and infringe on “their lifestyle”, especially affordable houses on smaller lots.

I know many guys who haven't pulled the trigger they were worried the market was to inflated so they didn't buy. 

Think of it as a hedge against inflation for all that capital you've saved.

It is a great way to start generational wealth, enact numerous tax benefits and the top secondary market to hedge against inflation. 

@Ian Loonce I think a lot of appraisers did get sued in 2008-2010 for unscrupulous practices, mostly working with lenders to inflate prices etc. so there are probably plenty of cases you can look at.

@Jake Conahan while I would normally advocate for utilizing that equity as soon as possible before you lose it to inflation, in your case you may want to clean up your DTI before moving forward.

In looking at deals, you really need to be mindful that rent growth, etc that we've seen for the past period will likely not persist (it can't without runaway inflation), thus you can't buy for projections/pro forma numbers.   

We know this is just because of what’s happening with inflation but we want to be able to take advantage however we can!