Reply #41: I'm down here in Vancouver, WA

[customerserviceguy]

and paying about $800 a month for a one bedroom place, in an OK neighborhood. The cops are too busy protecting the rich people in the other neighborhoods a few blocks away, so I hardly ever see them crusing down the street where I live, but that has its good and bad sides.

My recommendation is to wait until massive amounts of foreclosure property hit the market. Lenders have been damned patient during 2006, but they will eventually have to start repossessing homes that people simply cannot make the payments on. A lot of folks will see that they owe far more on their houses than they are worth, and with no other good choices, will just walk away from them. The lenders will try to sell them with really great terms, back during the last housing recession in the early 1980's, they even offered to pay moving costs (as well as closing costs) just to get the properties off the books.

Look around you, everything built within the last 25 years was NOT part of that housing bust. And the baby boomers needed the multiple bedroom houses, they were starting families. Now, they just need a place to approach retirement in, and don't need the mega-home, which is too damn expensive to heat and cool, anyway.

My advice, keep on waiting. I expect the situation for buyers will be better one year from now.