Buy Now vs. Wait: Some Practical Hypotheticals

The original appeared in April 2006, but has been updated for changes

I am hoping to buy in the (city) area and am reviewing the possibilities. While I fear that the local market may be peaking, I intend to live in the home for at least ten years, so I am not trying to time the market.

My questions have to do with the down payment. I expect to shop for a property in the $450,000 range, and currently have $60,000 available for a down payment. I make a decent salary and receive an annual bonus of $35,000 - $40,000 each February. The bonus, while not guaranteed, is very dependable. After taxes and deductions, I should realize about $20,000 - $25,000 from it.

Do you think I would be wise to wait until February, by which time I will be able to make a down payment of $90,000 and perhaps avoid PMI and pay less interest over the life of the loan, or seek to buy now and lessen the taxes on the bonus? (I itemize, am single and am in the 28% bracket). Will the greater down payment help me to capture a better interest rate on the loan? (My credit scores are right around 800). Also, if I buy now, is it possible that I will be able to negotiate a mortgage in such a way that I can pay my realized bonus in February as a lump sum towards the remaining principal without incurring penalties? Ideally, i would like to use my bonus each year to pay down principal, as I can afford to balance my budget, including regular mortgage payments, without touching the bonus.

While on the subject of credit scores, I am reminded of another question - does an 800 score do me any good as contrasted with, a 740 or 750? Thank you again for your consideration. Your writings have been invaluable to my education.

I would expect the property taxes to run about $5,000 annually and association dues to be another $350 monthly. As I don't have a car, parking fees will be inapplicable. My closing costs should be somewhat reduced as I work for a bank (parent company) and they offer employees favorable mortgage rates with no points and no origination fees. Of course if I go elsewhere for the loan that would not apply, but I would only expect to do so if I received even more favorable terms.

As for an equivalent property, the market would price the rent at about $2,200 a month, although I am only paying $1,520 now (for a less desirable place than what I am shopping for).

First things first. You are easily A paper. When I first wrote this, A paper was A paper - someone who just staggered over the line got the same rates as King Midas. That has now changed and there are cost differentials between people who just make it and people whose credit really shines. That said, focus on the bottom line to you, not how much of a differential you get over lesser customers. Which is really more important: getting a better price on the loan - better rate at a lower cost, or paying less than a prospective lender's next customer? It's not important that they give you a quarter point incentive if their basic tradeoffs were more than that above the competition. Look for a loan based upon the bottom line to you, not a little tweak that says you get treated a little better than the next guy.

A paper does differentiate between credit scores now, where they did not formerly - but much less so above 740 credit scores. Someone with a credit score below 720 who still qualifies A paper can expect a discount point surcharge on a lender's basic rates. At high loan to value ratios, this can be two points of difference - $5000 on a $250,000 loan, $10,000 on a $500,000 loan more than the higher credit score pays. Anyone reading this think $5000 isn't important? On the plus side, it's way better than going subprime (if you can even find a subprime lender that will take you with as tight as standards have gotten). One thing never changes about loans: shop by the bottom line to you.

Second, split your loan into two pieces to avoid PMI if you can. Current market conditions at this update are that second mortgages won't go over 90% of total value loaned, so you will probably have to pay PMI if you can't come up with 10% down. One first loan for 80% of the value, and a second for the remainder, whatever that is. The second will be at a higher rate, but better that than paying PMI on the whole balance. It's likely to save you a lot of money this way. If you intend to pay it down, be very certain that there will be no prepayment penalty.

Now, let's look at now versus basically a year from now. One thing I'm going to look at is whether your location may be above sustainable levels. My rule of thumb is that if a 20% down payment won't break even on rental cash flow, your area is likely to be overpriced. With current rates (6.25% for a thirty year fixed rate loan at par for the first, something like 9% for a 10% second), payment on $360,000 runs about $2215, plus taxes of $420 per month plus association dues of $350 plus an allowance of $50 per month for insurance. Total $3035 per month. As opposed to $2200 rent. An investor would be down $835 per month even if the place was never vacant and never needed repairs. Prices would need to drop $100,000 at least to cover that. I'm also going to assume you need $10,000 for closing costs out of your own pocket, reducing your down payment to $50,000. Now, I'm going to look 10 years out based upon this situation.

Now, let's look at suppose prices have come down that same $100,000 in a year, but rents have gone up by inflation - roughly 4%. However, rates are a bit higher - let's say 7 percent (actually, they are slightly lower now). Furthermore, you have $90,000 less $10,000 for closing costs leaves $80,000 down payment. I'm assuming property taxes are based upon purchase price, as they are here in California, but if they don't go down when prices go down, that's going to make a difference of about $100 per month to start and more later on. Let's look 9 years out for an equivalent time frame.

When I first wrote this, the picture looked much better by waiting a year for the market to get rational. If it hadn't, all you've done is taken that last year of benefits off the first chart, or worse, as perhaps the prices continue to rise for another year. Nor have I assumed that you paid extra on the loan. Quite frankly, once you've paid off that second trust deed, leverage is your friend, and you are better off investing the difference.

When I originally wrote this, the question was "When is Wile E. Coyote going to look down?" Okay, not all that funny, but it has applicability to the situation, and at this point it has happened, as you are aware unless you've been living as a hunted animal in a cave. As long as everyone was in denial, and there was a market of folks willing to pay those prices, the market could defy gravity. When people wised up, that ended. When prospective buyers "looked down", and they didn't like what they saw. There is no convincing reason why highly paid jobs have to be even more highly paid so that they can afford local housing here, whereas a large proportion of the jobs in certain cities like Washington DC or New York don't really have the option of leaving, as they are where they have to be. The government isn't leaving Washington DC unless it gets nuked, and the big guns of the financial industry aren't leaving New York unless every other big gun does so. You know better than I to where your city lies on that spectrum. My impression is that where you are is closer to the inelastic employment point. Nonetheless, if the rest of the country "looks down," so will those places that are relatively insulated.

If a 20 percent down payment doesn't pencil out as an investment property, as it doesn't in your case, the question is not likely to be "if?" the market is going to adjust, but "when?" and "how?" Here locally, you could almost hear the "pop!" If things are relatively inelastic, employer- and jobs-wise, a long slow deflation may be what occurs. You may even keep current prices while inflation makes things catch up, or keep going up but at a lower rate, taking longer to adjust. It's hard to say when I'm not as familiar with your city's economic engine as I am with my own, but here's what happens if prices stay stable for ten years:

As you can see in this case, you build up a fair amount of equity, but would have been better off renting and investing the difference. However, the odds are against this sort of market reaction.

At this update, my local market has seen all the crash we're going to unless the employment situation gets even worse. There is a premium for beaches, tourist attractions, and weather that's at least decent and usually wonderful all year long. People want to live here if they can, which means demand is high, supply is fixed, and if you won't pay it, someone else will. There is also upwards pressure on rents of single family housing, as landlords are looking at long term cash flow rather than flipping the property in a year, and the local market has mostly worked its way through excess inventory and there isn't as much "shadow inventory" here as some people seem to think (doesn't matter how much there is nationwide. The question is "How much is here?" There is no such thing as a national market for real estate, and anyone who thinks there is has just labeled themselves a bozo. Even a unified commuting area market is pretty much an occasionally useful fiction. Look at zip codes or even neighborhoods if you want an accurate picture of what is going on in an area - but that's too much detail for talking heads on national television programs)

Caveat Emptor

Original article here