Arizona Real Estate Notebook

John Talbott at Seeking Alpha;

I have been waiting for more than five years to offer this advice. It is now time in most cities across the country to buy a new home or refinance your existing home with thirty-year fixed rate mortgage debt. And this from the author of The Coming Crash in the Housing Market published in 2003 and my 2006 book, Sell Now! The End of the Housing Bubble. Let me explain why.

And by my calculations, in most cities across the country, real prices adjusted for inflation have just about come into line with where prices were in 1997, before all this crazy bank lending started, so there should be little additional downside risk by buying today.

Talbott talks about home prices being 50% to 65% of new home construction costs in many areas and he looks at home prices compared to median family income and rents. He says if inflation returns as he expects and you have 30-year mortgage payments locked in, you will do very well.

I’m not saying Talbott is an oracle, he could be a crank for all I know, but given his past books it’s an interesting change in outlook.

To get a feel for Talbott’s natural bias, he seems to pride himself on predicting financial crises, see Talbott’s Wikipedia entry.