My experience is that homes that are in great shape, in a great location, and priced correctly end up being sold quickly – in my case, a multiple offer situation.

However, the above scenario is not a newsflash; it’s just good ol’ common sense.

I’m pretty grateful everyone’s freaked out about the market and so many people are on the sidelines as that opened up a great opportunity for me that frankly I don’t think would have existed a year ago.

I stuck to my budget and my parameters and was unwilling to get into bidding wars or an emotional purchase, and I’m pretty pleased with the outcome.

If I were a flipper or investor I might be more concerned with timing the market exactly so, but for my purposes (raising my family in a good neighborhood) as long as it was right place, right price, I’m happy with the outcome.

In the subprime days a lot of folks urged me to buy but it just made no sense to me — in five years my payment was going to soar and, in my line of work (I’m a minister) there’s no way my salary was going to have risen to meet it. So I kept renting and eventually moved from Oakland (where I work) to Vallejo, because rents got so crazy.

I’m never going to time the market perfectly. All I know is that, here in Solano County, prices have dropped to the point where I can actually buy a house without being house poor. In fact, one criteria for my purchase is that it has to result in *less* financial stress than renting, and that’s actually possible these days.

This isn’t a flip project; I’m not looking to get rich overnight. Of course I want the house to hold and increase its value, but I’m in this for the long-haul. And if, in the end, what I get is 30 years without a landlord and real housing security, well, that will be just fine. The market will recover at some point, and I’m in no hurry; after all, patience is a virtue!

I don’t know where they got those San Francisco numbers, but for SF Proper, that 20% decline in prices is absolutely not correct.