Land in the Sunshine State
This article was written by Barbra Miller. Visit http://www.improveyourrealestateblog.com for great articles by famous real estate gurus.
Florida realty, say many experts in the field, has always been the subject of interest among market analysts. Even months after the September 11, 2001 tragedy, stocks stayed in the doldrums, so a large amount of investment monies went into real estate instead. This investment drove up property prices astronomically in a relatively short period of time, even though operating expenses remained the same. You know it’s a profitable business when even day-traders became condo-flippers, which fact continued to drive up prices as speculators flooded the condominium market in particular, creating just those bubble conditions that would eventually lead to a collapse.
Florida swampland has become synonymous with real estate excesses in the popular lexicon. “People who cannot learn history are doomed to repeat it,” said George Santayana, and housing bubbles are no exception. Of course, their own plain common horse sense should have told most people that it’s impossible to purchase something for which there aren’t any funds, but human nature is such that these same reckless risks are taken about every other generation, rather in the manner of clockwork. When it comes to speculating on property, interest-only mortgages have been the great and terrible enablers that have allowed so many to become so overextended.
For example, The National Association of Realtors reported in a recent study that up to twenty-three percent of all houses bought at the height of the mania were investor-owned. These kinds of people are prepared to purchase even though the property would rent out at a loss because they expect housing prices to keep rising, and they plan to sell at some point at a profit. Even “ghost” units built during the last round of speculative fever in the 1960s (yes, some thirty years earlier!) were being offered online for pennies on the dollar.
According to real estate professionals, Florida land today seems to be full of great values as there is such an intense oversupply and such an intense lending curtailment that it may be time to start cherry picking. Commercial residential and industrial markets certainly seem like they should be poised for upturns in the next decade. For example, South Beach, Florida is absolutely gorgeous, which is why the local market will always be hot, hot, hot! One can still make money on a South Beach condo, even in these economically troubled times, though of course the usual buyer’s caution applies doubly or triply so nowadays. But markets busts mean beautiful bargains when it comes to properties in perennially desirable places like South Beach. Buying foreclosed is probably the best deal of all, and certainly easiest for beginners and newcomers in this game.
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