Prices to bottom, rates to raise but still a Buyer’s Market

Real Estate is seeing historically low prices, especially in the luxury and near luxury market.  Prices are at or extremely near the lowest they will ever be but mortgage rates are beginning to rise and aren’t expected to return to the low rates we’ve seen over the last few years. Here is a very good article about what’s going on nationally in the real estate market that also addresses some regional variations. There are a number of good points for potential buyers and many that directly effect Florida buyers.
Read the whole thing but this is a very important point on the overall trend of the buyer’s market:

“You don’t need to have a sense of urgency, but understand that as time progresses the balance of power as we get into 2010 is going to slowly but surely shift away from [buyers],” Larson says. “It is not going to be a strong seller’s market, but it will be more evenly distributed as the year goes on.” Data from the real estate firm Zillow show that home buyers are already losing the leverage they once enjoyed.

Combine this information with the first-time and homeowner tax benefits that will be expiring in June, 2010 and you can see it’s still a buyers market but the window is closing.