Chicago TitlePro Blog

Did You Buy at the Wrong Time? Why Real Estate Is a Long-Term Game

There’s an old saying in real estate:

You can’t time the market.”

But can you?

Every buyer has wondered about it. Should I buy now? Should I wait six months? What if prices fall? What if interest rates change? What if I buy today and discover a year from now that I bought at exactly the wrong time?

Those are fair questions.

But when you look at the High Desert over a longer period, something interesting happens: what looked like terrible timing in the moment can look very different years later.

At the time of this article, our local median sales price was approximately $416,000. So we went back and compared that number with several very different moments in our market's history.

What If You Bought Right Before the Pandemic?

In 2019, before anyone knew what was coming, the median sales price in our local market was approximately $277,000.

By 2023, it was approximately $416,000.

That's an increase of about $139,000 in four years, or roughly $34,750 per year when simply averaged across that period.

Someone who bought in 2019 didn't know a pandemic was coming. They didn't know what interest rates would do. They didn't know inventory would collapse or that home prices would accelerate.

They simply bought a home at the price the market supported at the time.

Four years later, that decision looked pretty good.

What If You Bought at the Bottom?

Now go back to 2012.

After one of the worst housing crashes in modern history, the median sales price in our area had fallen to approximately $110,000.

By 2023, that same market median was approximately $416,000.

That's roughly $306,000 of appreciation between those two market benchmarks.

Of course, everybody would love to say they bought at the absolute bottom.

There's just one problem:

The bottom is usually obvious only after it's over.

In 2012, plenty of people were still terrified of real estate. Foreclosures were fresh in everyone's memory. Confidence had been destroyed.

The people waiting for someone to officially announce that the market was safe again generally didn't get the 2012 price.

That's the problem with perfect timing.

Okay, But What If You Bought at the Worst Possible Time?

This is where it gets interesting.

Let's go back to 2006.

The High Desert median sales price was approximately $323,000, near the peak of the housing bubble.

And we all know what happened next.

The market crashed.

Values fell dramatically. Foreclosures exploded. People who bought near the peak watched enormous amounts of paper equity disappear.

If there was ever a time when someone could reasonably say, I bought at the wrong time,” 2006 would be a pretty good candidate.

But now extend the timeline.

By 2023, the local median was approximately $416,000.

That's about $93,000 higher than the 2006 benchmark.

Did the 2006 buyer have an easy ride?

Absolutely not.

But a homeowner who was financially able to hold the property through the downturn experienced something very different from someone forced to sell during the crash.

Time changed the outcome.

That distinction matters.

Now Let's Go All the Way Back to 2000

Around the turn of the century, our local median sales price was approximately $85,000.

Compare that with approximately $416,000 in 2023.

That's a difference of roughly $331,000.

Nobody buying a house in 2000 could have predicted everything that would happen over the following two decades.

They would live through a housing boom, a historic housing crash, the Great Recession, a recovery, a global pandemic, extraordinarily low mortgage rates, rapidly rising prices, inflation, and then another period of sharply higher rates.

And yet, zooming out changes the picture.

That's consistent with the broader lesson found in long-running federal housing data: home values can experience significant cycles, including painful downturns, while longer holding periods can produce a very different picture. FHFA's House Price Index tracks these movements using millions of transactions and data extending back to the 1970s.

So, Can You Time the Real Estate Market?

Maybe occasionally.

But doing it consistently is another story.

To perfectly time a market, you essentially have to make two correct decisions:

You have to know when not to buy.

And then you have to know exactly when to get back in.

That's harder than it sounds because markets don't send out invitations when they reach the bottom.

Think about 2012 again.

It looks like an incredible buying opportunity from the perspective of 2023.

Living through 2012 didn't necessarily feel that way.

And this isn't an argument that real estate automatically goes up every year. It doesn't. Housing has experienced serious downturns, and historical research shows periods when prices took years to recover.

It's also not an argument that every property is a good investment at any price.

Price matters. Financing matters. Location matters. Condition matters. Your ability to comfortably make the payment matters. And, perhaps most importantly, your time horizon matters.

The Question May Be Wrong

Instead of asking:

Is this the perfect time to buy?”

Maybe the better questions are:

Can I comfortably afford the property?

Does the purchase make sense for my family or financial situation?

Am I buying something I can reasonably hold?

And am I comfortable with the possibility that its value could move both up and down along the way?

Because history teaches us something pretty clearly:

A house bought at an imperfect moment and held for a long period can turn out very differently from what that buyer imagined during the first year or two.

Sometimes the biggest mistake isn't buying at the wrong” time.

It's making a long-term decision based entirely on what you think the market will do next month.

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