Every day I hear the same mantra from real estate agents and builders: Now is the time to buy a house.

But is that really the case? It depends on your intentions.

Agents say it’s a good time to buy if you plan on staying in the home for at least three to five years. That’s how long most industry experts I’ve talked to say it will take the housing market to fully rebound if not longer. So flippers hoping to make a quick buck with a quick turnaround sale are out of luck. Even if the market is finally starting to level off, which is the latest buzz among agents, most still expect prices to drop further this year.

But if you’re a home buyer or investor in it for the long haul, this down market presents a lot of opportunities.

First off, there’s a massive selection of homes for sale both new and used. The ball is in the buyer’s court. Builders are offering discounts, sellers are offering to pay closing costs, foreclosure properties can be snapped up on the cheap and so on.

Interest rates are also still low. The average rate for a 30-year fixed-rate loan is currently 5.95 percent, according to a weekly survey by Bankrate.com. That’s actually lower than the average rate for a 5/1 adjustable-rate mortgage, or ARM, which is at 6.16 percent. ARMs typically have lower rates. But with the mortgage market in upheaval, investors buying the loans are demanding higher returns, making the loans more expensive for borrowers.

Of course, selling is easier said than done for most current homeowners who may want to move up to a bigger house. Competition is heavy and homes are staying on the market for a year or more in some cases.

But for first-time buyers or investors who don’t have homes to sell before buying another, now may just be the time to act if they’re smart about it.

After months of searching for the perfect home and enduring seesaw negotiations, exhausted home buyers are anxious to close the deal. Then — wham — at the closing table they’re hit with dozens of pages of loan documents full of confusing industry jargon.

In many cases during the housing boom, borrowers felt pressured to sign the documents then and there, whether they understood the facts or not. That’s led to much of the mortgage market chaos we find ourselves in today.

But the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development is hoping to avoid future catastrophes by making loan disclosure documents easier to read.

A proposed change to the Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act, or RESPA, would require lenders to provide people with a standard Good Faith Estimate. Many lenders currently give these out, but it’s not always easy to pick out a loan’s most important elements.

The revamped form would predominantly display the interest rate and monthly payment, whether the rate and principal balance can increase and by how much, whether the loan has a prepayment penalty or balloon payment and the closing costs.

The goal is to help consumers shop more effectively for low cost loans, according to the department, which issued the proposal March 14.

“Buying a home can be very intimidating,” said HUD Secretary Alphonso Jackson in a statement. “Consumers have had no assurance that the loan terms and closing costs they are offered will reflect what they confront at the settlement table.”

I’ve talked to numerous homeowners who had no idea what type of loans they were about to jump into. In many cases, it was clear the loan officer didn’t fully explain the mortgage details. Some borrowers didn’t find out until the closing table that their payments would be hundreds of dollars more than they had expected.

They aren’t alone.

In 2007, the Federal Trade Commission released a study that asked 819 mortgage customers across the country to identify key loan terms and costs on disclosure documents.

Roughly one-third couldn’t identify the interest rate, and half weren’t able to pick out the loan amount.

HUD’s proposal may help people better understand the loans they choose. But, local industry experts say, it’s also crucial to select a loan officer they can trust.

Read more on understanding mortgages and selecting a loan officer here.

I’ve noticed a recent trend in my conversations with builders and real estate agents these days. They say more potential buyers are calling up and stopping by model homes. More contracts for homes are being signed as people take advantage of discounts on foreclosure properties and other deals.

Of course, these agents and builders are cautiously optimistic and aren’t declaring that the tide has turned. Sales usually start to jog upward in the springtime when nice weather spurs potential buyers to get off their couches.

Agents also say the Valley still has huge hurdles to leap over. A massive oversupply of homes is on the market. Foreclosures are pulling down home values in neighborhoods across the Valley. Builders are facing bankruptcy. And millions of Americans are still feeling a financial crunch from the mortgage crisis fallout.

So is the bottom of the housing market’s dramatic free fall finally approaching? Maybe it’s too soon to even ask the question.

But one of the local builders I recently talked to may have been close to the mark when he said that things don’t seem to be improving, but they also don’t seem to be getting much worse.

In any case, I doubt anyone will dare to call it until the bottom has already come and gone.

Cha-ching.

That’s the sound savvy home buyers are hoping to hear by trolling for deals on Valley properties teetering on the brink of foreclosure. Bargain hunters who do their homework can get tens of thousands of dollars knocked off a home’s listed price. One route is through a short sale — where the lender agrees to accept less than what a borrower owes.

But local agents say that snagging a good short sale deal can be a drawn-out, arduous process and buyers who think they can handle it should be prepared to sit and wait.

It’s taking weeks and sometimes months for agents to hear back from banks on a proposed short sale. In many cases, it’s likely that the lender is waiting for a better deal. And in the end, they might foreclose on the home anyway. The whole affair becomes even more complicated when a homeowner has a second or third mortgage and multiple lenders must come to an agreement.

So if you’re a first-time homebuyer looking to get your foot in the door, experts say, think long and hard about whether a short sale is the best route. Home buying is an emotionally-charged experience for many people, especially first-timers, who set their hearts on particular houses.

But if buyers can adopt the detached perspective of an investor and be patient then that screaming deal may be on the horizon.

Arizona claimed the fourth highest foreclosure rate in the country last month with foreclosure filings up more than 200 percent from a year ago.

The state has typically hovered around No. 8 in a monthly ranking of states with the highest foreclosure rates, compiled by national research firm RealtyTrac. But February foreclosure filings — default notices, auction sale notices and bank repossessions — were up 210 percent from a year ago, catapulting Arizona into the top five alongside California, Colorado, Florida and Nevada.

Arizona saw a total of 9,650 foreclosure filings last month. That’s roughly one in every 264 households, according to RealtyTrac. Maricopa County saw a 230 percent increase in filings compared to February 2007, while Pinal County experienced a 288 percent spike.

Nationwide, 223,651 foreclosure filings were reported last month, a nearly 60 percent rise from a year ago, RealtyTrac reported.

Existing home sales fell throughout East Valley cities last month but with one exception — Gilbert.

A total of 265 Gilbert homes were sold in February, up from 230 in the same month a year ago, according to an ASU report. Meanwhile, Chandler, Mesa, Scottsdale and Tempe all continued to see sales slide.

Many potential buyers have probably been looking at Gilbert because of its good schools, proximity to freeways, newness and other benefits, said Jay Butler, who heads up ASU’s Realty Studies department.

“The prices are down,” Butler said. “So if you want to live in Gilbert, it’s probably the time to do it.”

Despite the slight uptick in sales, Gilbert’s median home price continued to erode in February, falling to $254,700 from $307,500 a year ago.

Overall in the Valley, sales were up slightly last month, compared with January. But, Butler said, whether the housing market starts to see more activity will depend largely on the fate of the nation’s struggling economy.

With the nation firmly entrenched in a housing and economic downswing, the USA Freedom Corps is rallying together volunteers to help homeowners become more financially literate and avoid more foreclosures.

Created by President George W. Bush in 2002, the group has established a database of volunteer opportunities related to financial literacy.

Resources for potential volunteers and homeowners can be found here.

The past several years have marked steep increases in construction material costs, but that rapid rise is expected to taper in 2008.

Construction costs jumped 7.5 percent in the Valley last year, according to a study by construction and property consulting firm Rider Levett Bucknall.

Other metropolitan areas were hit harder. Costs in markets, such as Las Vegas, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Seattle, rose from 11 percent to 13 percent, the report shows.

Costs will continue to rise but at a slower pace, a result of price drops in residential construction materials because of the housing downswing, the study states. The Valley is expected to see construction costs rise roughly 4 percent in 2008, however, because of ongoing commercial development.

The rate of homes falling into foreclosure hit an all-time high in the final months of 2007 according to a new report.

Nationwide, new foreclosures in the fourth quarter of last year rose to 0.83 percent of all home loans, up from 0.54 percent during the same period in 2006, a report by the Mortgage Bankers Association shows.

The industry group says the rising number of foreclosures is caused by troubles not only with subprime loans, designed for risky borrowers with iffy credit,  but also with prime loans given out to solid borrowers. Prime adjustable rate mortgages represent 20 percent of all new foreclosures, according to the study.

The report also states that homeowners are missing mortgage payments at the highest rate since 1985.

On Feb. 29, some 384 Valley properties entered the foreclosure process. That’s the single highest number of foreclosure notices recorded in recent history, according to research data firm Information Market.

A total of 4,613 properties entered foreclosure in February, according to the Glendale-based firm, which tracks foreclosure statistics. Another 2,197 properties were actually foreclosed on last month.

And in the first days of March, the number of foreclosures pending Valleywide surpassed 17,000.

Local industry experts say more foreclosures are on the way as home prices continue to fall, leaving residents owing lenders more than what their homes are worth. But some analysts are also saying that the foreclosure troubles could start to level off by the end of this year.

Read more on how the Valley’s latest foreclosure woes compare to prior housing downswings here.

VIDEO: A Gilbert couple talks about their grim prospects in today’s struggling housing market.