It's my pleasure to welcome you here at the Clark Howard Show, for our mission is to

serve you and empower you to make better financial decisions in your life.

Yesterday, I talked about how some improvements you might want to make to your home are becoming

more affordable.

It made me think I should talk about the cost of owning a home if you're thinking

of buying what.

I'm going to do that straight ahead later in the show though, I've got a key warning

for you.

If you're doing a Google search or Bing search or whatever search, there's something

you've got to be absolutely on the lookout for, because what you don't know here could

really hit you hard in the wallet.

It's being a hitting you hard in the wallet, mortgage rates, 7% plus or less plus or minus,

and home prices have stalled out generally around the country.

Some places have gone down a couple of points, others have gone up a couple of points, but

pretty much they're trendlining now instead of what we had for the last many years with

values going up, up, up and away.

If you're frustrated by this, the high mortgage rates by today's standards, and the fact that

homes were this and now are so much higher, and you don't know what to do, should you be

buying or not, all right, I got a marker for you to think about because I keep hearing

from people who have not bought a home before that you're really thinking about feeling

like it's now or never, and it's not now or never, it could be now or later.

This is how I'd like you to process this.

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