How to get the best deal

How to get the best deal
By Melinda Fulmer, MSN Real Estate

If you're ready to buy, try to make the best deal you can in a neighborhood that is holding its own, analysts say. Check real-estate Web sites such as Realtor.com, Trulia.com and Zillow.com, or go through the real-estate sales data published in your local newspaper to see what houses are going for in your area. When you have zeroed in on a neighborhood, work with an experienced real-estate agent to go over the fundamentals: How much inventory is out there? How many of the listings are foreclosures? How have prices in that neighborhood fared historically and over the past year or two? This will give you a feel for the overall direction of the neighborhood.
If there are a lot of foreclosures continuing to pop up, prices might fall further than you'd like in the short term. That may not be an issue if you plan to stay put for a while, but it could limit your options if you need to sell or refinance your mortgage.
Once you've bought, don't get discouraged if prices don't begin to jump back up immediately. Many, including Gaines and Conway, are predicting this down market to remain in a trough for a while, rather than bouncing back up.
"I think it will go down, hit bottom and slink along the bottom before it comes back up," Gaines says.
But ultimately, the market will come back up, he notes, even those markets in California that are taking a beating. "Does anybody really believe that California won't come back again, and with a vengeance?" he says with a chuckle.