Housing market

I live in a small county seat town in northeast Iowa. A house that sold for $172K in 2015 just went for $300K a couple of days ago. It was on the market for 2 days while listed at $239K, and got 6 bids at that level. The realtor then had a mini auction among the bidders, and that was the final sale price.

Insane.

That's to the point where one would think there is no way the house can appraise for that price. Hope the buyers are planning to bring a lot of cash.
 
That's to the point where one would think there is no way the house can appraise for that price. Hope the buyers are planning to bring a lot of cash.

If they get a fixed rate and can make the payments, they're fine.

But I wouldn't think of spending anywhere near that on a house. Making the payments would really restrict the rest of my lifestyle.
 
Heard a story from a guy on my bowling team, he works for his buddy's construction business as a part-time second job. Anyway...the company had agreed to build a ~375k house around the CR metro area a while ago but now its going to cost almost ~600k to build because of materials cost. Ouch!

And don't kid yourself, the price of lumber is going to stay high as long as interest rates are low. They may come down a little but we will never see the prices that we had 12 months ago.
 
And don't kid yourself, the price of lumber is going to stay high as long as interest rates are low. They may come down a little but we will never see the prices that we had 12 months ago.

I listened to a fairly long and detailed podcast on the lumber price bubble a couple weeks ago. I'm not even sure movement in the interest rates -- unless it's a huge move -- will necessarily mitigate the lumber prices a great deal.

A big chunk of the bubble is supply shortage from Canada cutting the logging allowance to mills, plus the number of mills being historically low.

You can say that supply will increase to meet demand, and that may happen to some degree, but I think your sentiment is correct that there has been some level of permanent shift in material prices for lumber...probably significant.
 
Building a new home with Happe Homes in Ankeny. They enacted a clause in the contract that allowed them to raise the cost of the build if market wide price adjustments occurred on materials after we signed our contract. They are offering to buy points down on financing through their preferred lender, but we weren't planning on using their preferred lender and were already planning on buying points to lower the interest rate. So yeah, we are not Happe.

I wanted to just laugh at this part...not the whole thing. That sucks man. I know our builder has been buying lumber futures so they can lock in prices once the purchase order has be been signed. We just talked to them a few days ago and he agreed that we are in an unbelievable position. Locked in our price last fall and still getting sub 3% rates w/o points AND seeing the market prices drive up around us. Good luck on the build! If it's any help lumber futures are down pretty substantially over the last week. They are still historically crazy high but there is at least a glimmer of hope prices will start creeping down.
 
I actually think the probability is really high that it happens again fairly soon. Even though people are borrowing money at incredibly low rates they are ultimately house poor. You can talk about "higher lending standards" all you want but I know what I'm pre approved for and I'm not comfortable purchasing anything close to that amount. Using farmers as an example doesn't really work since they are continuously getting bailed out...

Structurally I don't think 2008 is possible. That was historically bad. There will be some sort of correction though and probably should be.
 
I don't see a 2008 situation happening. People are buying these houses with low interest rates in a pretty strong economy.

As others have said, banks have been using higher lending standards as well.

It reminds me a little of people predicting a farm crisis when farmland shot up to around $10K in a lot of places, but we've been at that level for nearly a decade without a huge crash, largely because this growth wasn't being done via high interest loans.

I agree with this as well. My fiance and I have great credit and a nice cash position to boot. Banks were VERY quick to limit loan options last March. Once they saw signs of any sort of distress they tightened up their standards right quick.
 
I actually think the probability is really high that it happens again fairly soon. Even though people are borrowing money at incredibly low rates they are ultimately house poor. You can talk about "higher lending standards" all you want but I know what I'm pre approved for and I'm not comfortable purchasing anything close to that amount. Using farmers as an example doesn't really work since they are continuously getting bailed out...

Just because you "pre-qualify" for a dollar amount doesn't mean you'll actually qualify. I honestly think it's a bait and switch ploy by the banks to get your business. I have relationships with two banks and approached them both about loan options. The first gave me an online pre-approval for $1.3M. I assumed it was an error so I resubmitted the request and it came back the same. When I talked to an actual loan officer and gave them the specifics I could still qualify for a nice size loan but it wasn't going to be $1.3M. The second bank I worked with was much more reasonable and I felt did a better job of doing their DD on me as a customer. They would have worked with me on available loan sizes but I don't think the terms would have been as favorable as the risk would have been higher.
 
I wanted to just laugh at this part...not the whole thing. That sucks man. I know our builder has been buying lumber futures so they can lock in prices once the purchase order has be been signed. We just talked to them a few days ago and he agreed that we are in an unbelievable position. Locked in our price last fall and still getting sub 3% rates w/o points AND seeing the market prices drive up around us. Good luck on the build! If it's any help lumber futures are down pretty substantially over the last week. They are still historically crazy high but there is at least a glimmer of hope prices will start creeping down.
There won't be another adjustment. I thought we had locked it in last fall as well, but wasn't considering the fine print on the market adjustment clause in the contract. The house is framed and the roof is on it. In the end it was a little less than a 3% price increase, but that's a big chunk of change on a 400k+ home. Still, I've been looking around the internet and seen stories of cost adjustments that are much worse.

I am getting antsy about locking in a loan rate. We don't have a close date yet so I am just watching the interest rates daily and hoping that catastrophic rise doesn't happen anytime soon.
 
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Your argument about length of time in the home would make sense if the ARM rates were cheaper than the secondary market fixed rates, but they aren't.
At the current moment, no, but they have been. Got a 10/1 at 2% on residential earlier this year vs 3% on 30 year. When you have a decent size loan that 1% makes a big difference. It's all situational and rates/terms vary on the daily.
 
Minneapolis is a ******* **** show trying to buy anything. A house will go on a the market and by the end of the day will have 15+ offers minimum and the seller is typically making upwards of $75K over asking price.

We've been trying to buy for a year and it's brutal. You're up against tons of other people looking for the same thing and there aren't really that many homes coming up to buy now so it's a bloodbath.

We're seeing people waiving so many things. Waiving any sort of inspection. Waiving closing costs. Willing to buy a home for $75k over the appraised value and telling seller they'll just pay the cash difference. It's insane.
 
My wife and I want to build a home in 5-6 years. We got antsy the other week, but we realized we are in a good spot to save. 150k salary combined in Des Moines and we bought our home for only 190k in 2018. Mortgage payment is only 11% of our gross (includes taxes and PMI). We only put 3% down and our home is worth 235k now.
 
3 houses listed under 120K in Lincoln, NE. 2 are **** holes the other probably the same.....

what is this country doing to do about affordable housing?

Bought our first house in NW Omaha 'burbs in 2010. We paid $129k for a house that was 5 years old at the time. That same house is at $225k on zillow. So $100k in value growth in just over 10 years.
 
There won't be another adjustment. I thought we had locked it in last fall as well, but wasn't considering the fine print on the market adjustment clause in the contract. The house is framed and the roof is on it. In the end it was a little less than a 3% price increase, but that's a big chunk of change on a 400k+ home. Still, I've been looking around the internet and seen stories of cost adjustments that are much worse.

I am getting antsy about locking in a loan rate. We don't have a close date yet so I am just watching the interest rates daily and hoping that catastrophic rise doesn't happen anytime soon.

I hear ya man. We were JUST able to lock our rate in last week. We close in July. I kept telling myself that in the long run I wouldn't be upset with a rate at 3% or lower. That is still a crazy low rate on a 30yr note. So you're maybe what...about two months out from being able to lock in? You should still be able to get a good rate at that point. I don't think we'll really see rates jump until this fall or later. I wouldn't be shocked to see them start creeping though. I've been there...and hope to never go back. Good luck!
 

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