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A good strategy to make money when you buy is to find an area before it makes an urban renewal comeback. Look for the artists and the wanna-be artists, the folks who live for creative expression. These folks always seem to discover areas of cities a few years before they are economically viable and before they make a housing or commercial business "comeback” allowing you to make money when you buy. Market research and data is all well and good but if you’re thinking of making a significant long-term investment in property, find an area that’s recently become popular with the artistic subculture and primed for an urban renewal comeback.
They find the cheap areas with the great potential, and their presence helps the area make that comeback.
Here’s how you find the areas most likely to undergo an urban renewal (and thus property value increase).
Get out there and visit the restaurants, the art galleries. Check out the bookstores and coffee shops. Are there a lot of lofts available for rent in the area? Is there a lively music scene locally? Is there a pulse of vitality underlying the area, a crackle of “on the edge” living? Can you feel and see the culture of the neighborhood?
Sometimes, seeing a couple of funky outfits, or out-of-control hairstyles, warehouses converted into art studios, or local business walls once covered in coarse graffiti painted over by deliberate works of art can be more important and indicative of an area that’s about to make a real leap in value more than all the expensive site surveys or market research compilations you could ever pay for.
These artists and artistic-culture types are always the forebears of urban renewal in a place. Find these people and where they congregate and I can guarantee you’ve found an area of undervalued real estate that will provide you with an opportunity to make money when you buy because it will increase in value tremendously in the coming years.
These people always come first, the artists and sculptors and painters and writers, and photographers. They come looking for a certain sense of liveliness, of cultural seeds waiting to be watered. And when they arrive the local scene takes on a hum of activity that is underground until more small boutique restaurants, small hotel/motels, independent coffee shops and galleries spring up to provide them outlets for their artistic expression and entertainment needs (and part-time day jobs).
These artist types see something that business interests can’t yet see, they see the potential. And because that potential is not yet realized in the area they come and they find cheap rooms to rent and cheap space to lease for studios.
Before you know it, business interests that are or want to be perceived as “on the edge” or “artsy” begin showing up, from museums to advertising agencies, and from architects to bigger capitalized restaurateurs.
With this phase, more and more business comes in, and the yuppie element who want to believe they’re “artistic” but don’t want to live the broke-and-struggling lifestyle of most pure artists discover the area. They bring the upper clientele restaurants and more expensive national-chain coffee shops and movie theaters and twenty-four-hour copy shops and brand-name hotels.
Many times, then come the tourists.
And with every new trend in demographics, the property values go up until eventually the artists who began the movement and revitalization in the area get priced out of the market— and have to move elsewhere.
Remember, in real estate investing you make your money when you BUY. Use these tips to find undervalued areas where your dollar will go further and grow faster.
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