Housing Crisis Upside: Bargains for Everyone

Real estate watchers have been saying it for months now: It's a buyer's market and it's only getting better.

If you do your homework, you can find an array of real estate bargains: Thanks to the weak housing market, sellers and banks are slashing prices on everything from mansions to modest single-family homes.

(Dean Hamilton Realtors/Inter-City Realty)
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"There are all kinds of opportunities out there for people who have money," said James Wedgeworth, a real estate agent in South Carolina. "The smart money's buying right now."

Unfortunately for Wedgeworth, no one's buying the mansion at 74 Brams Point Rd. on Hilton Head Island. He and other real estate agents have been trying to sell the eight-bedroom, 18,000-square-foot estate for about two years. Thus far features like a private deep-water dock, indoor and outdoor pools, multiple fireplaces and a home theater haven't sealed any deals. So to entice buyers, the property, which has been appraised at $17 million, is now on sale for less than $8.8 million, a discount of nearly 50 percent.

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It's a great value, Wedgeworth says -- but then, why isn't the smart money buying?

"Most people," he said with a chuckle, "aren't that smart."

Wedgeworth and others say that, these days, the weak housing market is forcing sellers of everything from luxury estates -- like 74 Brams Point -- to modest one-bedroom homes to slash prices.

J. Patrick Lashinsky, president and CEO of ZipRealty, said some homeowners who have sat on the sidelines waiting for prices to rebound are now "deciding that they just can't wait any longer, they have to sell. They're pricing their homes very aggressively."

Home prices in 20 U.S. cities fell in October by a record 18 percent compared to the year before, according to the closely watched Standard & Poor's/Case-Shiller home price index. Some of today's cheapest homes are on sale by banks that foreclosed on the properties.