does this all mean it's a good time to wait, or should one buy now and hope we get a few more years of gains? My thoughts are due to Covid, more folks are going to want to move out of large cities and into smaller remote areas.
crazy times we are living in, that is for sure.
PS. I'm looking in the Sacramento CA area, fwiw.
I don't think anyone can tell you; there's a lot of weird, 1-off factors at play here. If there were ever a time when "The market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent", this is it.
FWIW our neighbors are part of this phenomenon. They're both in tech (he's software, she's hardware) so while they're in debt, their jobs are more rock-solid than ever, and the prospect of 100% remote work combined with sharing a house with two distance-learning kids pushed them to buy a second home several hours away. They basically live there now, on an acre property, which is lots of room to just let the kids run wild when they're not doing online school.
Basically, there are people out there who have money, they can suddenly work from anywhere, and they've been cooped up for half a year. I can't imagine, under any circumstances, buying a second home myself, but I can understand why others would see it as an escape they can afford.