And then there’s the question of when to do nothing. When does neither buying nor selling make sense?

When you should hold

• If you can rent your home short-term and the rent covers your mortgage and taxes

This could apply to someone who bought a property a while back for more than it is worth today and they don’t want to sell at a loss. If the rental payments in the area are good, they can rent out the place and move to a less expensive neighborhood. (If vacancy rates are low in your area, you can get high rents. Example vacancy rates: NYC - 3 percent, L.A. - 3.7 percent, San Francisco - 5.8 percent and Boston - 5.9 percent).

As time passes you’ll pay off more and more of the mortgage on the expensive place and hopefully its value will also rise.

• If you are waiting for your home’s value to increase enough to offset the agent commission and closing costs.

I know some people have itchy feet and don’t like to stay in one place for long, but there is no sense throwing money away! Think about getting yourself a new puppy or something instead. Now’s not the time to buy a house.

• If your house is in an area where prices have already bottomed and are beginning to rise (e.g. Boston, Chicago) — wait.

Whatever your financial situation, if the market has bottomed already there is no urgency to do anything. If you’re in a situation where your house is worth less than you paid for it, now is the time to sit back and wait for it to recoup its value. This is not a sensible time to incur a whole new set of moving/closing costs.

Do your homework
If you need further help with this decision, here are a few places you can go and do a bit of homework.

• If you’re thinking of selling, visit other houses similar to yours to see how well yours competes. Check online. (Trulia, Realtor.com, Zillow)
• Get an opinion from a good local broker.
• Check on NAR to see if values in your metropolitan area are rising or falling, and by how much: www.realtor.org/Research.nsf/Pages/MetroPrice
• Shop the new homes market. Builders across the country have 2.6 million new homes sitting unsold and unoccupied.

If after all this you still have no clue what to do, I recommend the latter option. Hold. If you really want/need to buy or sell, chances are you will, whatever I recommend, so please feel free to ignore all my advice!

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