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#7: Why right now may be the perfect time in 2023 to buy a property..

#7: Why right now may be the perfect time in 2023 to buy a property..

April 28, 2023 • Estimated Reading Time: 6 minutes

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Why right now may be the perfect time in 2023 to buy a property

If you’re planning to buy in 2023, I believe right now is the best window of opportunity to do so. While many factors go into it, I’ll share the reason why I think so. This is NOT an endorsement to go out and buy, but my opinion that now is an opportunity that you’ll find in the short-term.

Housing PricesHousing prices have declined since its peak in mid-2022. After a straight seven month decline, housing prices finally rebounded to break the declining streak. The Federal Reserve’s data (from PortfolioPilot) tells the same story that you see below. This may be the temporary bottom in the short term.

Interest RatesIn the last Federal Reserve meeting, the Fed decided to hike interest rates by a quarter of a percent. This signals that interest rate hikes are coming to an end as suggested from this article from CNBC as previous ones were three quarters of a percent. If rate hikes end and/or rates decrease, this will cause buyers to return back to the market in droves.

Even the I-Bond rate from May 2023 (announced today) is 4.3%, down from 6.89%.

Buyer PowerWith the uncertainty of the current market and high interest rates, buyers have a lot more power than last year. This means you’ll likely be able to get lower offers accepted and/or seller concessions.

RisksHowever, there are risks to consider as things can quickly change. The highest risk in my opinion is unemployment. I’m seeing A LOT of LinkedIn posts of people being let go from tech companies and consulting firms for the past 2 months and it’s spreading from the major companies to smaller ones. How will this impact the economy? Fear in the market, mortgage defaults, less spending, businesses leaning out or failing, etc. leading to a domino effect that will clear once the dust settles.

What was YOUR spark to join the FIRE movement? I’ll tell you mine..

Just as everyone’s FIRE ( Financial Independence, Retire Early ) journey is different, so is how they realized they wanted to FIRE.

At some point, you realized that you were tired of your job or you realized that you didn’t want to wait decades until retirement. I realized it in the winter of 2018.

PrologueI recently separated from the Army and joined a Big4 consulting firm. I moved to a high cost of living city and started my job. I was EXCITED AF. I networked with people in consulting and prepped for my interviews, which includes a case interview to test your ability to structure and solve problems. I did all this work to join a prominent firm only to be dissatisfied with the day-to-day work.

The SparkWithin three months, I was miserable at my job. I wore a suit everyday to work. I hated commuting on the subway during rush hour. I attended a lot of meetings and created a lot of PowerPoint slides that looked nice, but content-wise didn’t really mean much. I was also living paycheck-to-paycheck with half my income going towards a mortgage on a condo I purchased when relocating. That meant that I didn’t have much to invest (again, this is before I discovered FIRE).

I wanted to invest more into my retirement because it seemed like I needed a lot more for retirement. I decided to look for an additional source of income. I was browsing through the internet and Reddit for side hustle ideas and eventually stumbled upon FIRE on Reddit. I went down a rabbit hole and for the next 2 days, I kept reading about FIRE and eventually found Instagram accounts of people documenting their FIRE journey.

I thought it was so fascinating to see people’s progress and seeing what they were doing to achieve FIRE. I decided that I’ll join the movement in the new year. In January 2019, I created and started my Instagram account!

Four years later, here I am. I haven’t fully achieved FIRE yet, but I’m a heck of a lot closer than I ever imagined!