Depending on who you ask, read or believe, it’s a great, horrible, or nightmarish time to buy a home. It might be a buyer’s market. It might be a seller’s market. Homeownership is still the American dream, unless it isn’t. There are positive and negative indicators from all over the country.
Around the web (even though all you’d ever really need to read is right here on HousingWire), there are a few interesting articles about this unique time in the housing market.
Over on Bloomberg, Bob Ivry goes gloom and doom while trying to sell his book, The Seven Sins of Wall Street: Big Banks, Their Washington Lackeys and the Next Financial Crisis. He writes, in an excerpt from his book, that the next U.S. mortgage crisis is coming because of what happened in one troubled neighborhood in Memphis.
No one could argue that the U.S. economy is completely back on firm footing, especially after the market went crazy after Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen said that the taper will continue.
CNBC is even questioning whether the American dream still includes owning a home. For many younger Americans, owning a home is still a logical step in their life progression, but perhaps a more modest approach to lending will keep the mortgage industry from collapsing again.
The news isn’t all bad though. In fact, for those on the cutting edge, a person could always buy a home with their Bitcoins. Reports this week from Southeast Asia that the first major Bitcoin real estate transaction closed. The property? A fully managed villa at the deLMango Villa Estate in Bali, Indonesia valued at more than $500,000.
But how does one keep their Bitcoins safe so they can buy their own $500,000 Balinese estate? Forbes has your answer in the form of a list of the top 7 things you can do to protect your Bitcoin wallet.
If a Baliense estate and a Bitcoin wallet isn’t quite your scene, you can purchase a “micro apartment” in New York City for a cool million. The 420-square-foot apartment is priced at $995,000. That’s $2,369 per square foot, according to Business Insider. But the custom-built apartment can be configured to host a ten-person dinner party and even sleep a houseguest in a separate space.
And if all else fails, at least your house can smell nice. That’s thanks to custom scents designed to entice buyers to buy a home. An article in The Wall Street Journal says that luxury developers are partnering with fragrance makers to turn buyer’s olfactory senses into sold properties.
So go out this weekend and smell the roses, even if it’s just a “custom” scent designed to make you feel good. There’s always Bali.
