Category: Real Estate

Enough of the doom and gloom real estate articles.  Let’s find some opportunities.  The following article is on a new way to play real estate.

Source: Business 2.0 Magazine

Ever since Tony Kim flipped his “Starter Home” for an $80,000 profit six months after buying it, he’s been on a perpetual hunt for new ways to milk the real estate market. He scored in the past five years with condos in Southern California and South Korea. Now he’s chasing an intriguing new play: buying up individual hotel rooms.

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MD’s commentary: Peter Schiff is one of the few who is not concerned with being accepted by the mainstream.  His views make sense, but are hard to accept. 

by Peter Schiff
Euro Pacific Capital
August 25, 2006

During the unprecedented run up in housing prices over the last decade, most economists and real estate professionals firmly declared that the market would always move higher. When the recent cooling dashed those hopes, many reluctantly fell back to the “soft landing” hypothesis, which predicts that price appreciation will return to historically average rates. However the latest housing data, particularly this week’s figures on new and existing home sales, have made these overly rosy assumptions untenable. The “hard landing” scenario, which envisions real estate prices moving sideways, or actually posting moderate declines, is finally gaining broader credence. But, even this forecast will prove overly optimistic. The real estate market will not land soft or hard, it will crash and burn. Those who did not have the foresight to bail out may be faced with a distinct shortage of parachutes. 

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Source: Wall Street Journal Online

As some homeowners get squeezed by higher mortgage interest rates and a cooling real-estate market, many house bargain-hunters are turning their attention to foreclosures.  They hope to get good deals by buying from homeowners who are falling behind on their mortgages or by buying after the lenders have seized such properties.  Confirming the trend, online Web sites such as Foreclosure.com, Foreclosures.com and RealtyTrac.com, which list foreclosed properties and charge subscription fees, all report an increase in listings.

“For the right buyer, foreclosures are an excellent opportunity to buy a house at a lower than market-value price,” says Tim McCloud, an agent with Kelley Realty in Green City, Ohio, who specializes in selling foreclosed properties on behalf of the lenders.  Needless to say, buying foreclosure properties is more complicated — entails more risk — than going the regular home-buying route. Here’s what you need to know: 

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Real Estate Investors should continue accumulating cash and preparing for major buying opportunities 2-3 years out.  Sellers have no choice but to lower their expectations. 

 

Aug. 16 (Bloomberg) — Home construction in the U.S. dropped last month to the lowest level in almost two years after higher mortgage rates slowed sales and left builders with bloated inventories.

Housing starts fell 2.5 percent, more than forecast, to an annual rate of 1.795 million, a Commerce Department report showed today. Building permits, a sign of future construction, declined 6.5 percent, the most since September 1999.

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