In reality it is a pretty good time to buy a home. It is not a great time to sell a home. If you can wait, it would be wise to wait until the home prices in your area have leveled out. You do not want your home value to decrease rapidly due to the negative effects of the economy.
It is also important to consider how long you will be in the home that you are about to purchase. If the market continues to drop and you end up moving and selling in a year, you may have been wiser to wait a bit longer. You could end up selling your home for less that you paid for it. This would leave additional money to continue to pay on.
However if you plan on being in the house for several years, you will have time to wait for the housing market to begin to increase in value again. This means that the risk you take in purchasing your home is a lot less than if you were moving very quickly.
In order to gauge if the market is soft in your area, you should look at a few factors. You should look at the average time a home is on the market. You should also compare the current home prices with the prices that similar homes were being sold for a year ago. Ask a few real estate agents their opinions on the current housing market as well. In a soft market housing prices will have dropped, as well as sales, so the houses will be on the market for a much longer period of time.
