Buy an Apartment DAMNIT!

lol. i would rather pay cash at half of the cirrent prices.... or less.

Because most of us who are waiting feel prices have a lot further to fall. In the unlikely event that prices fall and interest rates rise by such amounts that the monthly carry would be the same as it is today, a lower principal means a quicker, easier time paying it down and greater profit when you sell.

Also, with seemingly no risk that prices are going to go up in the near or mid-term (I expect they'll keep going down and then sit there for awhile), it makes sense to see just how heavy this downturn turns out to be, and just how hard Manhattan is hit by the budget cuts and all the reduced services that result.

1 part of the problem is solved, interest rates.
now, we need the second part too: the prices to go down.
that's the time to buy.

Interest rates aren't going higher anytime soon. Plenty of time to wait it out.

You still have the very basic fact that prices are way out of whack with rentals (techie's genius purchase not withstanding). Anecdotally, and I'll be interested to see the Q4 numbers to confirm, rental prices seem to have collapsed even faster than the 15-20% in the condo/co-op market.

You spelled dammit wrong.

You spelled dammit incorrectly. :) msasch :)

Soem experts have predicted that interest rates will rise since all of the government bailouts are going to cause severe inflation down the road. What do you think?

alpine292 is right:

Now is the time to buy because interest rates are low.

Buy now with low interest rates for be priced out forever.

Go to any sales opps rent office and catch that falling knife with low interest rates.

mutumbonyc/mmafia/admiral ... shut up

It will definitely cause inflation down the road. However, we have a while (years) before that becomes a concern.

In the meantime the Fed is looking at Quantitative Easing to push down the rates of treasuries which will have an effect on interest rates. Mish has a good article on this topic: http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/2008/12/quantitative-easing-american-style-free.html

Jumbo loans are still high. Plus, down payments have gone up dramatically.

Not much help to nyc...

jgr/nyc10022 ... shut up

Alpine,
What second job are you going to take to supplement the income you used to make in real estate?