How do you know if your housing market has reached the bottom?

November 20, 2008

All markets are different. During the next few years, some housing markets will turn around faster than others. How do you know when your particular market has reached its bottom? If you wait until others pick over the great deals, you'll miss the bottom.

Keep a track of how many properties are listed from month to month. Once you start to see a reduction in inventory then that may mean that buyers are starting to buy. There could be two reasons whey inventory is reducing – overpriced homes may be taken off the market and sales volume could be picking up. You can find out this information from your local real estate agent.

Keep reading national and local newspapers. If your local media reporters are now starting to interview experts in your market and asking questions like, “Have we reached the bottom?” then that might be a sign that there may be a shift.

Talk to your friends and co-workers. How are they feeling about your local economy and housing prices? Are they more optimistic now than they were 3 months ago, or even last month?

Consumer confidence will be a big part in the housing market turning around.

Be on the lookout for mortgage interest rates stabilizing and mortgage companies start to ease lending restrictions.

One of the biggest indicators is when prices have stopped dropping. The secret is to buy before they start to inch back up again!

I’m not suggesting that you wait till the absolute bottom of your market to buy. You have to look at a home as a place to live, not an investment. Only you can determine what an affordable monthly payment is relative to the value of the home you are purchasing. There are individual homes for sale that can be bought at the bottom of your market, even if homes in general have not reached that mark.

Talk to a trusted real estate agent – we can help!

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Local Information for Orangeburg, SC

Latitude: 33.496843 -- Longitude: -80.862206

Other Area Cities: Orangeburg Saint Matthews

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Orangeburg, also known as "The Garden City," is the largest city and county seat of Orangeburg County, South Carolina, United States. The population was 12,765 at the 2000 census. The population has steadily declined since the 1950s. It is the county seat of Orangeburg County. The city is located southeast of Columbia, on the north fork of the Edisto River. A civil rights protest was staged at a whites-only bowling alley in Orangeburg on February 8, 1968. In what would become known as the Orangeburg Massacre, officers of the SC Highway Patrol became involved in an altercation with the protesters. The officers fired into the crowd, killing 3 and wounding 27. In May of 2000, the city created the Orangeburg County Community of Character initiative, which is a collaborative effort by the Downtown Orangeburg Revitalization Association (DORA), The Times and Democrat newspaper, the Orangeburg County Chamber of Commerce, and the Orangeburg County Development Commission. -- Source: Wikipedia.com

South Carolina 2000 Census Population Profile Map

	Orangeburg	South Carolina	United States
Population	12,765	4,012,012	281,421,906
Median age	27.7	35.4	35.3
Median age for Male	27.4	34	34
Median age for Female	27.9	36.7	36.5
Households	4,512	1,533,854	105,480,101
Household population	10,041	3,876,975	273,643,273
Average household size	2.23	2.53	2.59
Families	2,527	1,072,822	71,787,347
Average family size	2.88	3.02	3.14
Housing units	5,168	1,753,670	115,904,641
Occupied units	4,512	1,533,854	105,480,101
Vacant units	656	219,816	10,424,540

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