Stop asking me about buying a house

I've been keeping tabs on the real estate market for some time now, as everyone and their mother has told me all about how smart it is to go buy a house. Two years ago, all I heard was "you'd better get in now before you get priced out." Today I hear "now is a great time to get in."

As most of you know, Bay Area housing ain't cheap, but the Wacky Chinaman IS. So over the year I've horded my cash in anticipation of the day where I can buy a nice house at a reasonable price.

So are things reasonable now? Calculated Risk has an excellent series of posts today that provide a nice glimpse of the national residential housing picture. I'd love to do this for the Bay Area, but for now this will have to suffice.

Of all the graphs, I think price-to-income ratio is key going forward. Though price-to-rent ratios are a good metric too, I think that the current mentality of "buying is better than renting" and "renting means you're just throwing money away" mean that rent prices are less of a factor than actual income. This is pure psycho-speculation on my part. From this graph at least, prices still haven't fallen far enough.

Locally at least, every week brings a new press release of another tech company announcing layoffs (my company is no exception). This likely means that local housing prices will fall more over the next year or two.

In conclusion, I'm closer to buying a house now than I was last year, but I'm still not ready to pull the trigger yet. I'm not trying to time the bottom or anything, but I still think it's too early.