As an investor/consumer, I have no desire to overpay or participate in fake bidding wars.

We live in Minnesota, a consumer protection state.

I would venture to guess that there is no "wealth effect" and that the rise in prices is going to be temporary, neither situation will influence RE.What will influence RE is jobs, consumer confidence, and a better ability to obtain a mortgage loan.

This guy's arguement, on top of what we've already seen, "4.2mm new renters and 1.2mm fewer homeowners since the end of 2006," is that millions of defaulting "home owners" that have been living mortgage free, will soon be evicted by the banks, and be forced to come into the rental market.

If you bought a place with rents assigned, that's what you'd get your rent assignments based on for both parties, time consumed and time paid in advance. :)

You're in NY... lots of consumer protection, a letter on lawyer letterhead will likely change their tune VERY quickly.

As this number continues to get smaller it in turn makes the number of available listings (our supply) fewer and fewer.Thirdly, the number of homes in escrow, in pending or contingent status, in relation to the available listings has grown each month for at least the past 8 months.What I conclude from this is that the market is absorbing the inventory faster than the new listings are becoming available.

Unfiled taxes, lawsuits, insurance actions, consumer complaints, etc.

I'm sure this was a very time consuming project with lots of behind the scenes work.

It was a good price but we are new to this and it's really time consuming (electrical upgrade, new water-heaters, etc).