There is no answer to your question. Buy a home now.

Rather than worrying about the prices consider how long you and your relatives can stand being squeezed into the same house no matter how congenial you are when visiting. Start looking now before you move then the problem does not exist

I'm not sure what I said in my original post that is causing such negative reactions. I understand that there are no guarantees....I was just trying to get some opinions on whether housing prices might go down. I read somewhere that prices might start dropping once the foreclosure moratorium from COVID is over and I was wondering if that was true. Jim Mat......I will be reporting you for your rude comments. No need for that here.

Not negative reactions. No one on here has a crystal ball that they can look into and state what any market will do. While Kansas City is a fairly stable market it is not just one market and each section has it's own trend.

The real estate market, the stock market - they all move in mysterious ways. If someone could answer your question with any certainty, they'd be rich beyond your wildest dreams.

The answer is no one knows. It could stay hot for years, it could all blow up tomorrow.

We would all have won various lotteries and dominated the stock market if we were clairvoyant! Did any human on earth know about COVID in February 2020? Did you know the day before the Super Bowl which team would win? Sorry, you are stuck like the rest of us. Just make the best decision for your family based on your needs and the reality of your local market.

Come on, now you've gone too far, everybody knew Tom Brady would win! ;-)

Remodeling, some of us knew that there was a problem with a sickness when the Chinese government allowed a one line mention of a man dying of an unknown virus in The South China News about December 18. So unusual that it set my alarm bells ringing.

Some buyers in the desirable towns of CA have been waiting and predicting that the RE market would implode for the last 15 years ... in the meantime RE has appreciated much faster than wages and savings, and those buyers can afford even less house today. Sometimes waiting for the bottom isn't the best strategy!

Are you buying an investment or a home?

Fabulous point Chispa!

"Some buyers in the desirable towns of CA have been waiting and predicting that the RE market would implode for the last 15 years ... in the meantime RE has appreciated much faster than wages and savings, and those buyers can afford even less house today. Sometimes waiting for the bottom isn't the best strategy!"

How do you know my sister? LOL!

OP: None of us know the answer to this. It's all speculation.

You can't time the RE market just like you can't time the stock market. The best thing to do is get IN the market. You'll always ride some waves. Nothing increases in value 100% of the time. Find something you like and can afford and over time it will be a good investment. No one can predict the short term.

Do you think we have high inflation midwestguy and do you think it will continue? If the answer is yes then the desire to buy (demand) and a fear of selling (supply) will keep prices moving up. With the Federal reserve's refusal to tighten lending and fight inflation they're supplying the fuel for the fire in the housing and stock markets right now, and may continue for years.

But what if the federal reserve stopped propping up the market for U.S. treasuries to keep rates low and stopped buying mortgage backed securities (MBS) as they're aggressively doing now? (fact stated in last fed meeting) Well you'd see a rapid rise in Treasury rates along with mortgage rates..... and you'd also see a big drop in demand for MBS's which by the way supplies the money for new mortgage loans, and loans would dry up. Housing prices would fall like a rock, consumption would nearly dry up causing an economic contraction and deflation. (And we got a little taste of this last year.)

Thomas Jefferson said over 200 years ago (1816) that the banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies are to the country and he was so right. Along with Treasuries and MBS's the federal debt payment would sky rocket putting America and everyone in it on the brink of bankruptcy and total collapse.

Not to long ago I thought we were heading into a period of contraction and deflation before covid just on the generational demographics, consumption and birth rate. But now with the expansion of the federal reserve's balance sheet by another $5 trillion (crap they buy to prop up markets with wet money(printed money)) I'm not sure of a direction and this period in time is something never witnessed in America but was seen in other countries in the past (Germany after world war I and we all know how that went). If it's hyper Inflation, deflation, stagflation or total collapse I do know each will reduce your chance of getting a house going forward.

Buy a house you like and can afford and get your foothold in the market rather than sitting on the outside looking on anxiously as prices continue to change and likely increase. My crystal ball is imperfect, but something tells me that the impacts of the pandemic have forced a permanent shift in where work gets done, and that housing demand won't taper off in the near future as many more people continue to work from home and want desirable spaces since they are spending many more hours there.

Another thing to keep in mind is that you don't gain money or lose money as the housing market fluctuates...that only happens when you sell. I have lived in my current house for 15 years, and it declined in market value by about 25% in the first year I lived in it, but now is valued at about 2-1/2 times what I initially paid. But do I care about the highs or lows? I don't because I like my house and, since I've had no need or desire to sell it, I couldn't care less what the market valuation is.