I lucked out and was in a good spot when the market crashed, houses bottomed out in something like 11 or 10.
Sister had a guy that was really good with short sales.
(Pretty much he is good at pushing and annoying banks until they finally settle on a price)
I don't think it will be too much longer until the cycle starts over again.
When it does, i want a rental.
(probably buy a better house and turn this one into a rental)
then if it ever spikes like this again, sell sell sell!
Garage is the bees knees, you will get there.
Just be sure your in a good place when the time comes.
Also research short sales.
Math i used to buy a house,
Rough value of the house on the market vs area.
How much it would take for the bank to make it sellable
It takes roughly 10k to foreclose (iirc, might have changed too).
Math for teh offer! _(Insert price here)_
To explain more
say the house value "ready to sell" was something like 160k
Rough amount of money to get the house ready to sell if a contractor was to do it, roughly 50-55k
Expect the bank to spend another 10k on top of that in order to foreclose.
= 95-100k rough value
come up from that slightly to make the offer oh so sweet to the bank, say 105k.
With that, and a perfectly timed offer right as the market analysis predicted doom = house!!