Too late, Lewis.

How dare you think that he possibly could have bad motives! He just informs us about “low/no/tight inventory” in bay area in regular basis (e.g this, this, this, this, this). He also forecasts in regular basis that next year is going to be tough and “no relief in sight”.

Hurry up, buy something before you get priced out forever.

And people who invested in Vegas and Antioch real estate in 2006 that has lost 50% of it’s value did not “easily beat” the 3% they could have made on CDs at the time. In fact, they got slaughtered, some of them have declared bankruptcy, and are in a world of misery.

So you might want to add a few caveats to your statements, SV Shopper, lest we think you have bad motives.

Indeed. What are the chances of that?

“Ahh, here we go again. Yet ANOTHER person on this blog who claims that investing in real estate is a grand idea over other forms of investment.”

No, bob. We have the same person – real estater – posting the same misunderstandings under a different name.

Ahh, here we go again. Yet ANOTHER person on this blog who claims that investing in real estate is a grand idea over other forms of investment. First of all, if you buy outside of the Bay Area, there’s a reason why those houses cost less: They are further away from the working areas. Secondly, those prices are still falling and if you buy now, your asset will actually be losing value for who knows? 1 or 2 more years? So the statement that investing in real estate versus even a CD because the CD would pay less is also wrong.

Additionally , its simple econ 101 that stocks outperform real estate by a good margin. On average you will get anywhere from a 7-10% appreciation in stocks while the average in real estate is around 4%. Even in the prime of prime areas like Palo Alto, the return is only about 6%. So either way you cut it, stocks will beat the crap out of real estate. I’ve repeated this numerous times because its true. But if others think they’d rather invest in houses then go for it. Just realize you’re not acting like the brightest bulb in the bunch when you do so.

That’s like giving birth to two identically retarded children that both manage mega-projects.

No offense to the retarded children.

And no relief in sight for this poor seller either. This guy bought “touch the sky” home in 2005 for $1.252K. Can’t afford to sell less. So he keeps listing since September 2008. Although he can touch the sky from this property, but after price started going downhill the owner cannot touch his 2005 purchase price anymore.

But, but, SV “wife-big-on-education” Shopper said that inventory is tight, so it got to be true. That means “touch the sky” property is not part of the inventory.