Your Home as an Inflation Hedge

Groceries, gas, and raw materials; its not only the headlines that that bear this out.  Try the gas station with $4/gallon gas or grocery store check out line.  Let’s face it, with the monetary policies of the last few years and international competition for raw materials and other goods, we may be in for a bout of inflation.

While foreclosures get all the headlines, recently they are more about the slowing rate of distressed housing and homeowners.  What doesn’t get a lot of press are the upward pressures on raw materials costs, specifically those materials that go into building a new home like lumber (international politics and conservation), asphalt (oil), steel (appliances), window frames (oil), wire (copper), plumbing (copper) and overall price pressures resulting from increased transportation costs – oil, trucking, rail etc.  New home inventories are about at the lowest they’ve been since the housing bust started.  All of these events will eventually lead to increased building costs and retail pricing associated with new housing.

While foreclosures currently offer abundant home buying opportunities, for those wishing to live in a never-been-lived-in home, built or at least trimmed out to their wishes, new homes are the best option.  With a new home you don’t risk buying someone else’s nightmare, which could include undisclosed defects or other problems.  The cost of refurbishing a foreclosure could easily result in costs that exceed what a new home, builder- direct could cost.  And, with new homes, often times the builder has made arrangements for cut-rate financing from a lender.

But I digress, the bottom line is: that with interest rates still at a generational low, housing prices and affordability still more favorable than they have been in years, and the specter of inflation upon us; you can control your housing costs and keep them low for years to come by buying now.