Hello there

First and foremost is thanks to our families for everything starting with raising us or from their perspective putting up with us. :)

Now some take aways...

- Anytime is always a good time to buy, just depends on your situation
 - I say this because I find the perennial question, "Is now a good time to buy?" meaningless. In the end it really just depends on what you want. The news out there such as bad/good economy or buyers'/sellers' market are just things you have to accept and deal with.

- Thanks Redfin for creating a wonderful site!
- I also Thank Zillow for creating a very useful and enormous home valuation site!
 - As mentioned in my previous post, I used a variety of sites to search for homes and I am thankful for their existence.
On a side note, I just can't understand how our families bought their homes years ago before websites existed. I think I would be lost still if I used their methods which would be combing through newspaper ads, picking up and pouring through free real estate magazines at street corners and lastly word-of-mouth from the agent or other folks in this day.

So that's why I want to very much Thank Redfin.

Redfin is very simply a wonderful site to use.

With that said, I feel bad for not using Redfin as our agent. My excuse is I had already talked to an agent first who was a referral from my cousin. My cousin did not use the agent in the past instead the relationship was through a friend of a friend. Honestly during the beginning we quietly "interviewed" a few agents by seeing how they act around people in open homes, respond to our questions and just guessing if we would be compatible. As we moved along I realized I kept relying on the agent my cousin referred me for a lot of things from several late night questions, lots and lots of rounds of home tours and more importantly: submitting bids.

- My wife and I are looking forward to enjoy our first home. :)
 - On a side note, I am broke now from buying the home. :) Redfin, you hiring? I'm looking! :)

I have a gripe about home prices in the San Francisco and San Mateo counties.

I think most of the sellers these days are still in lah-lah land. Despite all the negative news they still think there is some golden anchor out there willing to plop whatever they are asking. Instead what I see is they continue to wait, and wait, and wait. Some appear to "wise-up" by reducing after a month or more. The reason why I say "appear" is because sellers end up wasting another month or more of mortgage payments when they could have cashed out earlier and stopped the bleeding. Another disappointment I see is when they reduce, it's not a whole lot. Sellers are just not realistic about the true value that their house can fetch in today's market. Instead they are only concerned about their own value which unfortunately, in what I've seen, never attracts that golden anchor.

I think in today's difficult market to find buyers the only obvious way is to price like a contractor's special. In that situation multiple offers should come in and some will probably come in over asking and that will be the true value.

Anyway, good luck to those sellers waiting for their golden anchors.