Volatile Market, declining prices, foreclosures = A good time to buy?

I really don't know much about mortgages and the housing market, but I just read an article on Yahoo.com (US Home Prices Drop 11.4 Pct in January: Financial News - Yahoo! Finance) saying that U.S. home prices dropped 11.4%. Doesn't this mean that now would be a good time to buy, assuming that the market will turn around and go up again eventually? Apparently this is the most that housing prices have dropped in 20 years. Does this make any of you think that you might want to buy a house now?

Also, how has this affected you/your parents?

I moved away from home a few years ago, and so I'm really not sure how this affects anyone because I'm not paying mortgage prices, foreclosures, I have no first hand experience... I just pay rent, which is why I'm interested in responses. Thanks.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Originally Posted by Shin

Also, if you're looking for a pure investment, buying land is a much better bet than property. Whilst property values fluctuate at the best of times and can sometimes get hammered, land will generally increase steadily in value, particularly with the current and future problems of population increase (More of a problem in the UK than the US, granted but still a valid point). In fact, some conspiracy theoriests are suggesting that the entire financial market collapse was engineered just to lower land prices. Believe what you will on that one...

I think the conspiracy theory is a slight stretch of the imagination, but I was actually thinking of land as an investment in the terms you're speaking in very recently. The only problem is, it seems to me that land fluctuates almost as much since housing prices since every building has to be build on land... who's to say it's the building and not the land? I still think you're right about land being a good investment, I just don't know how to make sure the buildings are the entities that are declining in value at the moment.

Also, I agree with you that many people have lost because they tried to guess how far down the market would go before turning around, but isn't that just because they sold too early? Even if I did buy now, couldn't I assume that the market would go back up eventually?

There's nowhere I can't reach.