It's been a few years since the housing market crashed, but now experts are saying that it's a great time to buy a home. So what's changed? In this video, San Diego Realtor Katy Carlson will take a look at the current market conditions and why now might be the best time to buy.

Hi, my name is Katy, I'm with Whissel Realty. And today, I want to talk about why it's a great time to be a buyer. Not everybody is go-to at this moment in time. A lot of people are asking me, "What's going on in the real estate market?" And some of my friends and family are even teasing me like, "Oh, must be great to be a real estate agent right now."

And I'm thinking, "What are you watching? What are you seeing?" Because what I'm seeing and what my team is seeing tells a very different story. And that is that it's a great time to be a buyer. Let me explain to you why. We are coming out of a market where, yes, mortgage rates were very low, 2-3%. That's fantastic. But what that did is brought all of these buyers into the market, and homes were just flying off the shelves. You list a home, you get 20 offers. There was no room for negotiation.

There was no room for things like contingencies, like an inspection. You want to have those things in place. So right now, what we're seeing is that, yes, full transparency, mortgages rose really rapidly, really quickly. It happens when inflation happens. So we went all the way up to 9.1, according to the Fed. But we are starting to come back down. So, from 2%, yeah, it felt really insane for mortgages to come up into the sixes. And that is kind of high. But right now they're coming back down to the fives, even the fours. And that's manageable.

Those are manageable rates that you can work with as a buyer. What's even more beautiful about this situation is because of the way that the market has shifted, prices of homes are also starting to come down a little bit. I say a little bit, it's about 5% down from where we were last year at this time. This probably, and I don't have a magic ball, but this probably won't last long. So we are in a space where prices are coming down, and mortgage rates are super, super accessible. And on top of that, because of the fear that the media is creating, buyers are backing out.

So while there were 20 people going for every single home that got listed, even just six months ago, now they're much fewer. And this is incredible. Yes, we can negotiate the price, but there's a lot of creativity that we can have with this. We can ask for credits for closing costs. We can ask for interest rate buy down. Now, I'm not saying this is going to happen every time, but we really do get to have fun with this part of the process because we know that we have a leg to stand on. So what I would love is to have a conversation with you and help you navigate the home-buying process.

It really truly is an incredible time to get in there, get creative with our offers, and get you exactly what you want at a price point that feels really good for you. So, reach out to me anytime, you can call me, you can text me, and I hope to hear from you soon.

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