Real Estate: Good or Bad Market?

Today's business headlines are filled with all kinds of doom saying regarding the housing market.  To be sure, the current housing market is definitely a buyer's market, but one would be hard pressed to confirm that fact as housing stock is through the roof (no pun intended) in many areas with what seems like very little buyer's in the market for a home at all.  In fact, the consensus in the general population seems to be that now is a very bad time to buy real estate. However, those that are knowledgeable in the real estate investment arena would disagree completely.  In fact, for those of us seeking profitable investments, we couldn’t ask for a better time to get involved in real estate. 

One of my favorite real estate investment speakers states that, “You need to learn how to roll with the punches when it comes to real estate.  There will always be good times and bad, and you have to know how to keep your composure in both.”  Two to three years ago it seemed like everyone was jumping on the real estate investment bandwagon.  As housing prices inflated rapidly due to rock bottom interest rates, any average Joe could buy a house at market price, hold on to it for a year or even less in some cases and still turn a nice profit.  Sadly, I know many people who invested in real estate during that time who are now struggling to make payments each month on properties that they have been unable to sell since the market cool down.  Many are selling their properties at a loss for fear of loosing even more money in the long run due to the continuing deflation of housing prices.  Unfortunately for most of these amateur investors, they forgot the cardinal rule of investing, "what goes up must come down".  A savvy investor would have foreseen that the market would eventually drop and would have been prepared for it.  But like most who invested during that time, they didn’t educate themselves prior to buying their properties and prior to the market taking a down turn.  On the other hand, people getting into the real estate investment business now have a better chance of being more prepared the next time it happens. 

No matter how you look at it, people will always find the good in the bad and I personally am definitely finding the good in today's real estate market, no matter how bad the headlines say it is.