John Paulson made a lot of money while others lost it.  At a net worth of $12.4 billion, he sits at number twenty on the Forbes 400 list.  Now he is predicting the short term future, saying that double digit inflation is coming and it is time to ditch short term bonds for stocks.  All of this is according to a Forbes article reporting on a talk Paulson did in New York a month ago.  He also had some interesting things to say about the real estate market (quote taken from the same article):

“If you don’t own a home buy one,” Paulson recommended; ” if you  own one home, buy another one, and if you own two homes buy a third and lend your relatives the money to buy a home.”

I’m not much for predicting the future, and I think that timelines are quite different in local markets, but this got me thinking.  Although activity is down here in Boise, I still track prices for single family homes and multi-family investment properties on a daily basis.  We have nice homes listed for $70 per square foot in Boise and duplexes for under $100k.  In Nampa, you can buy a duplex, triplex or fourplex for around $30k per unit (read: cashflow).  Rents are still pretty steady as more people go from being home owners to renters again.

So is this the best time to buy a home or investment property?  If it isn’t, it’s pretty close.  Close enough that ten years down the road, you won’t notice that you missed the bottom by a few months.  However, if you wait until the bottom is reached, time will no longer be on your side and you will have probably missed it.

Photo Credit: Forbes.com