Pasadenan's Q&A

As stated, before, you really have to have more of a long range outlook than just 4 years.Sure, if you can show that your rent would cost more as in Tiffany's case while you attend a 4-year school or similar, buying may make sense.  But you don't even have the right time frame for the typical "rule of thumb" for a stable market, let alone a market substantially influenced by other economic factors.But you didn't even indicate why you would have to sell out in 3 to 4 years, nor why you didn't anticipate having a long term employment in the area, nor why you want to spend so much money in property taxes, nor why you want to spend so much money for HVAC energy costs.Of course Realtors ® will tell you to buy.  That is the only way that most of them would have any income.  We are fortunate that there are Real Estate agents like Tiffany and Roberto that don't have a need to distort the market conditions.

Why don't you just flag the properties that have the wrong zip?  Zillow staff needs the flags to bring things to their attention.

"Buying at this time, it will be most likely that you will get some equity on your  house , so you can do it." -If the property was appraised for more, are you stating it wasn't sold for "market value", and that the seller was foolish for leaving all that money on the table, and not insisting they get "fair market value"?  Are you stating that their Realtor ® intentionally mislead them to sell for too little, just so that the Realtor ® wouldn't have to put so much time and effort into making the sale?The price things sell at "is" the market value by definition.  It doesn't matter what the appraiser states; it only matters what the properties will actually sell for.  Therefore, there was no additional equity left on the table.Of course all homes have equity when they are purchased!  It is called the "down payment".  It is not "free equity"; you put your money in for it.  And not only do you pay your down payment, but you also pay your loan origination fees, the inspection fees, the appraisal  and all the "closing costs".  So, if you put in the FHA minimum of 3.5%, and an additional 3% for the other costs, you have put in about twice what the equity is.And then since the prices are presently propped up by the Federal Government by about $30k, you get to lose all that equity when the government pulls the prop out from the market and from under you.

"Find someone that's knowledgeable, that you feel like you can trust" -"Feel"?  What kind of measurement is that?You've made it clear, the first question that needs to be asked is what high school the Realtor ® went to.  And then to pull their high school transcripts, since it is clear that most Realtors ® never learned how to do math.If they didn't get at least an A in Algabra-2 and an A in Geometry, and possibly an A in PreCalculus or Calculus, it is clear they just don't have the math skills to do what they are claiming to do.  And what statistics courses did they take in College?Doesn't matter if they have taken an oath regarding some "code of ethics".  If they don't have the math skills, it is no better than the person that put the defective O-ring on the Challenger rocket that blew up on launch with all those people in it, or all the people that said it was OK to launch it without it even being checked.

The maps require Adobe Flash player.  You likely will need to go to the Adobe Website and download the add-on for your browser.  Sometimes an old version is also not sufficient.The other possibility is that you have a slow connection (such as "dial-up", and it just never finishes loading.  In that case it might be worth using the FireFox browser, and loading their "ad blocker plus" add-on.

Did you try going to your "my Zillow" profile page (link in upper right corner of this page)?There is a link for your photos there...For each of the photos, if you "right click" on it you should be able to copy the image location (depending on your browser, it is slightly different).  Then you can open a new window in your browser, paste the address into the address bar, then find the "?", and delete everything from the ? on (Everything after .jpg)Then press enter to see the image.  If the original image has a resolution higher than 2000 x 2000, it will complain, and you will have to tell it to size the image smaller, by adding after ".jpg"   ?size=2000,2000In some cases, it has to be ?size=1999,1999but it is not clear when this applies.As your screen may not show the full resolution, you may need to click on the image to get it to show you the higher resolution.Once it shows it, you can right click on the image, and choose "save image as" and save it back to your hard drive.Zillow saves all images in the original resolution they were sent, but converts all to JPG regardless of what was uploaded.  As long as your original resolution was less than or equal to 2000 x 2000 pixels, you can get your original resolution back.  But zillow has no indexing to find images other than the profile page and the properties one posts to.  And of course all names that Zillow uses for the images are randomly generated, and the original file name was lost when uploading.

At least with zoning changes, the governments are required to have public hearings months in advance of any proposed change, and all parties are allowed to testify.  And if a party believes that a zoning change was a "land taking" for their property, they can sue the government for damages.  (Last zoning changes I testified at took over 2 years from the first meetings to the time the new laws took effect).With a private sale, there are no such open processes.  It is simply up to the seller.  And unless you can prove discrimination, there is no recourse.

"Best anyone can realistically do is tell you the areas that have appreciated in value up to this point" -There they are trying to sell "past performance" again.  They know full well that past performance is no indication of potential return.  In actuality, it is almost the opposite... if something recently "bubbled", it is more likely to fall, and fall harder.So, if your buying and selling costs come to about 13% (excluding the interest and maintenance, and taxes, and HOA....), and you are going to liquidate in 4 years; how much does it have to appreciate per year to "break even"?  1.13 ^(1/4) = 1.031 ---> 3.1% annual.  How does that compare to the consumer price index?  About twice as high?Why don't you just compare to bubbled gasoline?  It was at $5/gallon a year and a half ago.  The bubble collapsed and undershot, going down to under $2/gallon last December.  And it has now stabilized at about $3/gallon.  So in 4 years, it would have to sell for at least $3.25 to "break even".  Well it might, but the dollar would likely be worth that much less, so you are being paid back in deflated dollars.  And the housing market hasn't finished deflating unlike the gasoline, so it is like buying the gasoline at $3.75 now, and hoping it will sell it at $3.25 in 4 years.Thus, it is a "loss", even if you could find something to buy where your interest, insurance, HOA, taxes and maintenance was less than your rent for the equivalent.As long as the government is propping up the market prices with "tax giveaways"..., the market has further to fall, and it will.

"30-year mortgage rates have dropped back down to their record low mark." -If that makes it a good time to buy, why did you mark my answer as "best" that states the exact opposite needs to happen in order for it to be a good time to buy?And as I stated before, if it is such a good time to buy, why are you still selling?  Shouldn't you stop selling homes and start buying them, so that you can put your foot where your mouth is?

Of course we need to point out that Realtors ® do not consider their commissions as part of the cost of a home, nor a loss on the sale of a home.  They just consider it "payment for services rendered".  But the question is, why do you want to pay $15,000 for "services" you didn't need, and wouldn't have paid for otherwise, and that you will never recoup.Of course the Realtors ® want you to pay them.  But there is no way you will find that "expense" worth it to you if you are only staying 4 years.