"What you don't know can hurt you":  That's true as far as it goes, but it doesn't go far enough.  This does:  "...and what you think you know can hurt you just as much". 

 

Like any social phenomenon, the ups and downs of local real estate have been loosely translated into a collective mythology, passed down not around tribal campfires but at backyard barbeques and office work stations.  This real estate mythology fills a need, symbolizing the fears and hopes of teller and listeners.  But like any mythology, it's a little light on fact, since it explains events its tellers don't always understand.  That's not helpful. 

 

What is helpful is to look at the recent history of local real estate, not its mythology.  Because if it’s true that history repeats itself, then a review of that history can save us time, money and trouble.

 

Recent history might confirm our worst fears about buying local real estate, or it might encourage us to plunge into the market.  The horror stories you may have heard about homes losing big chunks of value overnight might be true, but it depends on when you bought and on the price range in which you bought.  And, unbelievably, even if you bought during 2000 your house is worth more now.

 

There’s no denying that if you bought in the highest price ranges anytime from November 1999 through March 2001 the value of your house has sunk as of this writing [less true since 2005].  If you’d sold that house after March 2001 you’d have taken a bath—but then again, maybe not.  I’m going to show that buying top-end real estate with the inflated currency of the stock market often gave a better return than leaving it in the market. 

 

On the other hand, if you bought an entry-level home in all but a handful of months over the past five years you’ve done okay and often much better than okay.  The entry-level market has been much less an E-ticket ride.  Prices haven’t accelerated as quickly (except in 2004) or plunged as dramatically.  So if you’re an entry-level buyer waiting for prices to crater, recent history says the odds are against you.

 

I’ll also talk some about the dramatic impact that lower interest rates have had on the cost of buying a home, and how that’s effectively rolled back prices. 

 

I think what follows makes a persuasive argument for buying a home, even when you have to compete for it.   But history also shows that buying in this area, where the long-term price trend is up, has been a good idea even when lay-offs and recession made it look too risky.  I’m definitely not suggesting that you wait until the market hits rock bottom.  After all, the only way you’ll ever know the market has bottomed is after the fact, when prices are rocketing back up and buyers have handed back their leverage to sellers, and that happens quickly here.  I am suggesting that if interest rates are low, inventory high and sellers motivated, that’s as good as it gets for local buyers.  That’s your cue, your flashing neon sign that says BUY NOW.  (And how prescient those words, written in the much different market of late 2003, look in early 2006:  rates are still low, but prices are up 20-35%, depending on the area, and inventory is now almost non-existent.) 

 

I’ve charted the price performance of four hypothetical but typical homes.  Follow the chart as I recreate the real estate market since September 1998.

 

Index I is a 3-bedroom/2.5-bath townhouse of 1550 sq.ft. located anywhere from Sunnyvale to San Carlos.  Although this townhouse isn’t the cheapest housing on the mid-Peninsula, it represents the entry-level market in this scenario. 

 

Index II is entry-level single-family, a small (1400 sq.ft.) 3-bedroom/2-bath house in South Palo Alto, The Willows and unincorporated Menlo Park, plus Redwood City, Mountain View and San Carlos west of El Camino.  These houses represent the lowest common denominator acceptable to the largest number of single-family buyers.  It isn’t their dream home but it’ll do until the next big pay raise. 

 

Index III is the next step up, what I call “first-level move-up”, with either three or four bedrooms and two or 2.5 baths.  At 2100 sq.ft. it’s half again as large as the Index II house immediately above.  This house is found in more upscale neighborhoods including Los Altos, parts of Palo Alto and the more expensive sections of west Menlo Park.

 

Index IV is a bit more grand but still not top-end.  I call it “second-level move-up” because it’s just a larger, probably remodeled version of the Index III home, and found in much the same areas.  This house is 2900 sq.ft. and has three to five bedrooms and two to three baths.

 

Of course, I'm not charting four actual properties as they sell over and over each month, but I've refined the parameters of these four index houses to the point where I believe they closely represent what's actually happening in their respective markets.  With that qualification, let’s follow the index homes through the recent ups and downs of the local real estate market.

 

You can read this history chronologically, starting with 1998 immediately below, or skip to any of the following years:

 

1999    2000    2001    2002    2003    2004    2005    2006

 

 

 

      1998:  the calm before the storm                     

 

 

Why begin in September 1998?  Because it’s recent, yet distant enough to give us some much-needed perspective. 

 

By 1998 local real estate had pulled out of its early-‘90s slump and was well into a steady recovery.  Prices had bottomed in late 1993 and then risen slowly but fairly consistently.  By 1994 local business had resumed hiring.  Hiring went into high gear in 1995 and, virtually overnight, the rental market shifted from a renter’s paradise to a landlord’s market.  Sales prices continued to rise gradually and by 1996 real estate’s other vital signs, absorption and days on market, began to improve.  A higher percentage of homes on the market sold instead of being withdrawn unsold from the market, and homes sold more quickly.

 

As the local economy expanded it continued to lure people, increasing demand for housing.  Many bought immediately, and those who initially rented often decided to buy in a year or two.  Demand gradually began to exceed supply and by 1997 overbidding (paying more than list price) appeared consistently.  This trend continued into early 1998, with the average overbid increasing.  This wasn’t the infamous bidding frenzy of 2000 but it was a long way from the grinding buyer’s market of the early ‘90s.  In fact, real estate through most of 1998 was in that rare and nebulous state called “equilibrium”, or something like it—neither the depressed buyer’s market it had been nor the runaway seller’s market it would soon become. 

 

But in the fall of 1998 local real estate faltered as the tail end of the “Asian flu” banking crisis hit this area.  Homes took longer to sell, and they reverted to their old habit of selling for less than list price or not selling at all. 

 

I see Fall ‘98 as a calm before the storm.  Buyers no longer controlled the market but had not yet yielded control to sellers.  Both the stock market and tech were back and booming, but neither had as yet high-jacked local real estate. 

 

Is there anything to learn here?  

 

Yes.  First, real estate can be healthy without a stock market that's leaving earth's orbit. 

 

Second, the real estate market can be influenced by something other than a tech meltdown or a terrorist attack.  In Fall 1998 the trigger was an old-fashioned financial panic of the sort that’s brought down markets since the invention of capital.  Perhaps the tremendous ups and downs of local real estate since late 1999 have conditioned us to think that nothing less than an earth-shaking event can be a market mover.  But if you’re waiting for the next spectacular high or low to influence home prices, real estate might just creep away from you. 

 

And third, real estate is a cyclical market that rewards over the long term.  It goes up and down, and normally those cycles are measured in years.  Latetly they’ve been measured in months, but that’s not normal.  Eventually we’ll revert to the mean.       

 

 

party like it’s 1999     

 

 

1999 got off to a great start, with prices recovering nicely from their Fall ’98 dip and even exceeding their previous early 1998 highs.  Otherwise the market was still much like it had been during the good months of ’98.  Overbids were still the rule and in the same percentage range, indicating that sellers had a slight upper hand.  Prices trended up, as they often do during the spring buying rush, but the trend was gentle. 

 

This pastoral scene ended abruptly in fall 1999 as the NASDAQ suddenly went up like a rocket, with local real estate prices trailing closely behind.  The chart shows that prices shot up quickly in all ranges but especially for the larger, better homes.  This wasn't the last time the top end would show such volatility.  The second-level move-up home shot up an astonishing 38% from September to December, the first-level move-up home 28% during that same four-month period. 

 

But notice that the NASDAQ’s meteoric rise jolted the entry-level market less, since that end of the market is driven more by wages and interest rates than by stock market wealth. The entry-level single-family rose a very healthy but relatively modest 9% during the last four months of 1999, while the townhouse split the difference between entry-level SFR and first-level move-up at 18%.

 

Are there any lessons here?  For one, the “entry-level” market is the bedrock of local real estate.  1999 showed us it doesn’t take off as spectacularly, but the next few years would show us that it lands far more gently.

 

 

2000:  the thrill of victory, the agony of defeat, then another thrill     

 

 

2000 began on the same cheerful—no, make that exuberant—note on which 1999 had ended.

 

After a brief break for the holidays, buyers resumed snapping up everything in sight.  Very few doubted that this was a great time to buy, and market momentum carried almost everyone before it.  All but the most grossly overpriced homes sold.  Underpriced homes (and it’s hard to price a home right when the price curve is almost straight up) sold with twenty, thirty or more offers.  For a short time overbids averaged 33% in the highest price ranges.  Add that one-third markup to the already-high list prices and we’re talking lots of stock market money.  To the jaded participants, this excess was no longer a novelty; it was expected. 

 

The market kept roaring upward, even through late March and into early April as the NASDAQ redefined volatility.  Then came April 14^th, one of the Black Fridays in stock market history, when the NASDAQ collapsed.  That made an impression, especially at the top end.  A pall, what can best be described as an eerie silence, fell like a dense fog on real estate.  Transactions dropped out of escrow and sales plummeted just as inventory was starting to pour onto the market.  Agents were stunned.  Was this the end of the party?

 

And yet...real estate quickly began to recover during the summer, led initially by the top end.  The stock market rallied at the same time, not a coincidence. 

 

After Labor Day real estate took off again, as it usually does, but now against an unsettling backdrop of falling stock prices and dot-com meltdowns.  Real estate was unfazed.  No, this wasn’t the good old days of only a few months ago but multiple offers were still the rule.  In some ranges, prices were actually higher than they’d been that spring, and history said that next month they'd only be higher. 

 

How could real estate hit new heights just as the local economy was having its air cut off?  My guess is that when the angels and VCs abruptly turned off the money after April 14^th the first casualties were in the lower ranks, people more likely to rent than buy.  And in fact the rental market, which had been as tight as a drum, suddenly got very soft, but few agents follow the rental market.  Meanwhile the higher echelons of dot-com-dom were shoveling their declining stock market wealth into real estate as fast as they could.    

 

It’s true that the market declined sharply very late in 2000, but this could be explained as the usual seasonal drop-off.  There still seemed to be plenty of life left in real estate.  Next spring would be more of the same, only more so. 

 

What can be learned here?  Plenty, as usual when a market goes off the rails. 

 

First, it’s fashionable now to scoff at those who paid “outrageous 2000 prices”.  Yes, it’s true, you’ll pay more when you compete with thirty other buyers.  But I’ll suggest that buyers who bought with the inflated currency of the stock market—and weren’t forced to sell later and bring money to the table to do so—made a very shrewd purchase.  Where are the hot stocks of 1999 and 2000 now, even the ones that are still traded?

 

Second—and this is an even bigger lesson—look at the difference in performance between the two entry level homes and the two move-up homes.  All four price levels went up, then down, but the upper end went way up, then way down.  I’m stressing the low end’s relative lack of volatility because I regularly meet entry-level buyers who, encouraged by the huge hits the top end has taken, expect their end of the market to tank catastrophically.  Never say never, but it hasn’t happened yet, despite compelling opportunities.

 

The chart shows just how volatile certain price ranges were in 2000.  Just to put some numbers to the trend lines, the second-level move-up home shot up 57% in value from January to March 2000—and 86% from November 1999 to March 2000.  That’s staggering.  This price range saw huge overbids every month, hurtling prices into the stratosphere. 

 

Meanwhile, the first-level move-up home escalated 12% from January to March 2000, and 53% November 1999 to March 2000.  During those same five months the townhouse and entry-level single family home rose 7% and 14% respectively (and 23% since November), also unbelievable rates of appreciation but modest in comparison.

 

After the April crash the second-level move-up lost 24% of its value in the two months through May (ouch!) and the first-level move-up 13% through May.  Through June the entry-level SFR lost 9%, the townhouse 12%. 

 

These loses, while large, were only temporary.  During the Fall 2000 comeback, the second-level move-up home gained 24% from its July low while first-level rose 27% from its August low.  Entry-level SFR gained 22% from June to December, townhouse 24% from June to November.  Gains like this tell you why the market seemed to have plenty of life going into 2001.     

 

I enjoyed 2000, not because it was an easy market (it wasn’t) and not because I sold overpriced homes to infatuated clients (none of my buyers made 33% overbids).  Rather, 2000 was a rare chance to see popular opinion transform a market [obviously, I wrote this before 2005].  Buying real estate was cool.  People were intoxicated by it, obsessed by it.  Even those with no real interest in real estate felt the need to stand by the fire.  Widespread optimism swept aside the fear and hesitancy that rein in a normal market, just at a time when fear and hesitancy would have been most appropriate.  But the 2000 market was propelled not only by the basic need for shelter but by the three engines of real estate—credit, confidence and jobs—each of them firing on all eight cylinders.  Perhaps the biggest lesson of 2000 was this:  people buy when they can, and when it feels good. 

 

 

       2001:  turn out the lights, the party’s over

 

 

As 2001 began it was obvious the market had changed.  In fact, it had that same oppressive pall, that same ominous, deafening quiet of the weeks following the April 2000 crash.  Prices were still very high but few homes sold.  Real estate had reached the stage in the boom cycle that economists call “revulsion”, when a market begins to choke on its excess.  Home prices had attained a level that made sense to fewer and fewer buyers.  The stock market staged a brief rally and then relapsed into a coma.  Real estate buyer confidence melted away just as a torrent of inventory hit the market.  I began to run into people who took real delight in telling me about the latest dot-com catastrophe, even though each tale of woe pointed toward their own lay-off.  I learned that this is how people deal with impending doom.

 

Something had to snap, and it did.  In April 2001 prices slid as much as, or more than, they had a year earlier after the April 14^th stock market crash. But by May prices had stabilized.  Then the summer doldrums came and again real estate floundered.  However, there was reason to hope that the market would recover in September, typically the start of the second buying season. 

 

The September 11^th attacks quickly ended that hope.  Real estate lurched to a halt.  People still showed up to open houses but went through as if in a trance.  This had to be the final straw for local real estate.  Add the terrorism threat to a lousy stock market and a severe local recession and this could mean only one thing:  another serious and lengthy slump like that of the early ‘90s.  I said so in a newsletter sent to 500 people.  Possibly one or two of them read it.

 

And yet...by mid October the market was recovering.  Prices were down from their summer levels but homes were finally selling.  In fact, it was soon clear that intelligent buyers were back in force, looking for good deals in a battered market and getting them.  Late 2001 proved to be an active and very decent end to a very challenging year.

 

What happened?  Fall 2001 is amazing testimony to this area’s appeal, even in the face of extreme uncertainty.  Sales had been slow earlier in the year because prices hadn’t yet declined to match buyers' lower comfort level.  But after September 11^th sellers lost all hope, always the sign of a market bottom.  Many reduced their prices, and real buyers jumped in to take advantage. 

 

The chart tells us something about the relative performance of price ranges.  Note that the two upper levels each lost 34% of their value when prices cratered Spring 2001.  Entry-level and townhouse lost only 9% and 13% respectively, still a good hit but nothing like what the upper end took.  A 34% loss means that, with the usual 20% down payment, not only had the owners of our two move-up homes lost their entire equity in four or five months, their loan balance now exceeded the value of their home by several hundred thousand dollars.  And some of these people had to sell…

 

The lower price ranges fared better.  The owner of the entry-level SFR saw the value of his or her home decrease 9%, although in this price range that would also have wiped out the often-minimal down payment in many cases.  The townhouse owner saw a 13% decline.      

 

 

       2002:  déjà vu all over again?                         

 

 

Note that the chart shows prices going up in December 2001.  That’s very unusual.  Prices usually go down that month.  December set the stage for a remarkable spring rally. 

 

The market’s 2002 recovery was brought home (no pun intended) to me dramatically one Saturday morning in early January.  Clients I hadn’t heard from for a year called me out of the blue about a house.  We agreed to meet there, and as I drove up I saw so many cars parked along the street that it looked like someone was having a big party.  When I got out of my car I realized that the "party" was at the house for sale.  People were streaming into and out of it as if it were an open house—a very busy open house.  And this was 11:00 on a Saturday morning, more than two hours before the scheduled open house.  And my clients, who had never made an offer, gazed rapturously at this sure sign of a market run amok and decided that they too wanted a piece of this insanity.  Real estate was cool again.  A few days later the house sold with thirty-one offers.

 

Spring 2002 was good to every price range.  Even the wobbly top end sold fairly well, as well as during Spring 1999, for a brief period.  The chart shows that all four of our index homes saw substantial increases of around 23% from their November 2001 lows.  While not near their March 2000 highs, prices were where they’d been in late 1999 when the market was ramping up to its Spring 2000 frenzy.  Multiple offers were common again although, unlike 2000, this didn’t necessarily mean overbids.  And while overbids were back too, they weren’t the wild overbids of 2000—the stock market had lost three trillion dollars.  But all in all, Spring 2002 was a scaled down but lively and very encouraging version of “the good old days” of only two years before.

 

Summer 2002 saw the usual seasonal lull as buyers went on vacation or shifted their interest to backyard barbeques.  But after a strong spring it looked like the fall buying season would be very good to sellers.  Sellers thought so too, lots of them, because in September it suddenly looked like everyone was trying to get out of Dodge while the getting was good.  The run-up to the invasion of Iraq also prompted homeowners uncertain about the future to put their homes up for sale.  Inventory flooded the market, the same kind of flood that had brought down the market in early 2001.  This time sales stayed solid but now buyers could cherry-pick houses, buying only the best and leaving the rest.  This massive selling erased the gains of spring and returned prices to their January levels.  But 2002 was still a very good year, approaching 2000.  Local real estate had flexed its muscles again, however briefly.     

 

 

I could also call the 2003 market the who forgot to turn off the lights? market.  The lead-up to the war in Iraq, and a plummeting stock market, caused buyers considerable anxiety early in the year.  Remarkably, buyer demand was still fairly strong in most markets.  Open houses were still swamped and people bought as low interest rates counterbalanced uncertainty about the future, but sales weren't high enough to absorb an increasing inventory.  Supply was meeting demand, keeping a lid on prices, and real estate was in one of its rare periods of equilibrium.  Midyear the market picked up as uncertainty about the situation in Iraq lessened and the economy and stock market shows signs of recovery.  The summer doldrums cut this short, but after Labor Day the market went into overdrive, spurred by rising interest rates.  But instead of tailing off around Halloween, as it usually does, real estate found another gear.  Inventory was still high for the time of year, but not strong enough to meet unusually high demand.  In fact, midrange sales in late 2003 were as high as their 2000 midyear peak and higher than they'd been at any point in 2001.  Prices began to creep up.   Multiple offers were common, although bidding was usually restrained compared to other high-demand markets like Spring 2002.   Unfortunately the chart of index home prices doesn't fully reflect what happened in late 2003.  But the signs of rising prices were all there.  Overpriced listings that had been on the market for months suddenly sold, and not just a few, but most of them.  New listings overpriced by the standards of recent closed sales sold quickly, and with multiple offers.   Very little low-end and midrange inventory was canceled or withdrawn unsold.  Even the top end, battered almost continuously since 2000, showed signs of life.

 

 

       2004:  déjà vu all over again, part II                         

 

 

Yes, the fireworks went off again in 2004, but unlike the 2000 and 2002 boom-and-bust markets, this market was remarkably consistent throughout the year.  After a strong January, buyers hit the market hard in February, making prices jump about 10% in a month.  (This sudden explosion might be a sobering lesson to buyers who think they can time the market, rushing back in just as home prices go up; they go up overnight.)  Demand for homes was much like 2000, with multiple offers the rule.  One house had sixty-seven offers, and I've heard of another with fifty-something offers.  Buyers were frantic to get into a house while interest rates were still rock bottom.  After the February price spike, prices trended gently upward until summer, when they leveled off.  September and October saw the market get back into gear, with prices rising even higher than their spring levels.  Inventory, low all year, had become a critical problem by the end of the year.  Note that while 2004 was good to every price range on the chart, it was exceptionally good to the two move-up homes; that price range made up all the ground it had lost to the entry level since cratering in late 2001.  Overbids, low inventory and a blazing pace made 2004 seem much like the boom months of 2000, but in fact, 2004's overbids were nowhere near as high as 2000's—yes, Virginia, 2000 was an even hotter market than this one.     

 

 

  2005:  ...and amazingly, deja vu all over again, part III              but...                        

 

   

If you've hung with me this far you know that boom markets in local real estate, while frequent lately, have been measured in months instead of years.  The boom born in Fall 2003 would ordinarily be well past its expiration date as we entered 2005, but buyers certainly didn't notice, at least not right away.  As the chart shows, prices jumped sharply in the first two months throughout the price range.  Overbids were high, particularly for entry-level single-family homes but also even in the $1.5M price range.  By May the market had slowed from this frantic pace as more inventory brought supply in line with demand, although sales were far from slow.  That equilibrium is characteristic of our late spring and early summer market, and the relative doldrums of Memorial Day through Labor Day were also typical, as vacation and recreation diverted buyers from the business at hand.  But it was unusual that prices didn't blip upwards in what's usually real estate's second big buying season, from just after Labor Day to Halloween.  In fact, the chart shows prices decreasing late in 2005, particularly in the entry-level single-family range that had been so hot earlier in the year.  That observation needs two qualifications.  First, it's not unheard of for prices to drop in November and December, usually two of the slowest months of the year.  And second, the chart doesn't show that prices in many entry-level sub-markets held steady through late 2005.  But there's no question that some of the hottest sub-markets of the past two years took a substantial hit from September on.  Was it Katrina and the subsequent run-up in energy prices?  Was it second thoughts about the more aggressive loan products that buyers increasingly have turned to as prices rocket up and rates inch up?  Was it the bubble talk in the mainstream media and the blogs, which began to crescendo about this time?  Or was it that buyers, at least in some areas and price ranges, found it harder to justify aggressive borrowing in the face of uncertainty about the economy in general and home prices in particular?  January 2006 started slow, but February's burst of activity, especially at the affordable end of the price range, indicates that demand and prices are still high.  Stay tuned...

 

 

Go here for an extensive look at how well local real estate held its own in 2006, against a backdrop of national price declines and misleading headlines.

 

 

so where are we now?     

 

 

Check my monthly update for what's happening right now.  Read on for what the trends I've covered in this article mean to you as a buyer or seller.

 

In my introduction I alluded to some pleasant surprises about real estate’s performance.  Let’s see how you’d have done if you bought the 3-bedroom/2.5-bath townhouse in September 1998.  Pretty well:  it’s worth roughly 92% more as of December 2005.  That’s average annual appreciation of about 13%, even with a few market gyrations.  And if you read on you’ll find that, contrary to popular belief, our index townhouse retains its value as well as the single-family homes. 

 

Your purchase would be worth 88% more as of late 2005 if you’d bought the entry-level single-family home in September ’98. 

 

The first-level move-up home's appreciation was identical at 88%, while the second-level move-up went up 82%.  As the chart shows, much of this appreciation happened in 2004.

 

But you know there’s a downside too.  Okay, I’ll give you a few “buy high, sell low” scenarios that might keep you awake tonight.

 

Say you bought the second-level move-up home when its price peaked in March 2000.  If you’d sold in August 2001 when the market bottomed you’d have taken a 43% shellacking, and even more than that with the usual buying and selling costs.  Ouch—unless you sold your tech stocks to make the big down payment or all-cash offer you’d have needed to beat multiple offers back then, because during the same period the NASDAQ’s index of computer stocks lost 65% of its value.  And you probably know someone who lost even more. 

 

The first-level move-up home would have shown you a little more mercy, losing “only” 34% from its March 2000 peak to its November 2001 low.  Entry-level single-family and the townhouse would have inflicted roughly equal damage at minus 18 and 21%.  Again, note the greater volatility in the higher price ranges.

 

But only a relative handful of people bought at the market’s peak.  What if you’d bought one of these four index homes in 2000 but after the March peak, say in May or June of that year, when prices dipped briefly? 

 

Under that scenario your townhouse or entry-level SFR would actually be worth about 36 to 38% more in late 2005 than it was in June 2000.  The two move-up homes would be worth about 7% more if you'd bought at their June 2000 low.  7% doesn't sound impressive—unless, again, you sold stock to raise the down payment.  What if you’d kept that money in the stock market?  The NASDAQ composite index declined 41% between May 31, 2000 and December 31, 2003, and that's after 2003's healthy rebound.  

 

And finally, what if you’d bought one of these index homes in a buyer’s market with soft prices, high inventory and anxious sellers, say Fall 2001?  In late 2005 your townhouse would have been worth 54% more, your entry-level SFR 50%, and the two move-up homes 54% and 45% more.  And prices continue to stay strong as this is written in early 2006.  Not a bad payoff for buying when others were on the sidelines waiting for prices to go down.  In fact, that’s why you came out okay.  You bought when conventional wisdom said it wasn’t okay.

 

Finally, the effective cost of buying a house has gone down since 2000 even more than you might think, and without hurting sellers.  Declining interest rates have substantially reduced monthly mortgage payments.  In 2000 the average rate for a thirty-year fixed-rate mortgage was 8.05%; lately it's been just above 6%.  That means the monthly payment is about 18% less today than it would have been in 2000 for a house of the same price. 

 

Lower interest rates act like a time machine.  They give you another chance at buying a house at Fall 1999 prices.

 

No wonder homes are selling.

 

Interested in buying or selling?  Please contact me at jfyten@cbnorcal.com.  

 

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