You've all seen the headlines and news articles, "The goal of owning a home seems to be getting beyond the reach of more and more Americans," Business Week; "Housing experts predict price rises in the future won't be that great...," National Business Journal; "The golden age of risk free run ups in home prices is gone." Money Magazine; "A home is where the bad investment is." San Francisco Examiner.
But wait! There's more! I neglected to give the dates these articles came out. The Business Week article came out in 1969 when the average sale price of a home was $28,000; The National Business Journal article was published in 1977 when the average home price was approaching $50,000; Money Magazine, 1985; and my favorite from the San Francisco Examiner was published in 1996.
Tucson High Class of 1977 included yours truly. Buying a house was not on my list of things to do but two years later even making the equivalent salary of a Motorola engineer, I found I could not afford to purchase a home, and I was not alone. With all the depressing headlines I began to believe that home ownership would never be "in the cards" for me. 30 years later, how things have changed, yet those stupid headlines still read the same way telling folks you can't have the American Dream.
I have several young clients today that are rightfully excited about the current "bad" market. These folks took advice from an individual that although made several mistakes on life's road, learned a thing or two from his Dad and Grandad. The first of these lessons was subtle and I am not sure the teachers were even aware of the lesson they were giving. It happened that as we would be taking a load of hay in or moving cattle by truck and trailer that we would pass a piece of ground and Grandad would say, "I could have bought that 10 years ago for $50 an acre. Now its worth twice that." Or my Dad would be delivering accounting book work to clients with me riding along and would say, " That building is sitting on an old abandoned pig farm I could have picked up for the taxes and now its worth $100,000."
The Second lesson was, be patient. Eventually, things come back around and experience will tell you when to make the move when this happens. With this in mind, I told those young clients two and three years ago that they needed to rent for a while. They could have easily qualified for "something" and in the heat of that market a lot of people got "something." The market has changed and for some that weren't beneficiaries of good advice think the market stinks and are in some cases looking for someone to blame or bail them out. While they are singing the blues, my clients are happy as clams that they waited and are asking, "What do you mean, bad market?"
This brings me to a question I have received a lot over the past two years and that is, "When is this market going to improve?" Of course, I can't answer that question without clarifying for whom, buyers or sellers? There are a myriad of other reasons I can't answer this question. For one, I have never found a crystal ball that works and GOD has not written the answer on the wall, (thank goodness.) I can tell you this, if you bought property of any kind in the area that was serviced by the newspapers and magazines quoted above, during the times those articles were written, and you have held on to that property, you have an outstanding real estate portfolio that even "The Donald" would consider a well placed investment. I can also say that If you are a buyer with good credit and some down payment money coupled with a good loan officer giving good advice, (See www.Hercel.com click on partners) and an agent who has not just been around but knows the ins and outs of this current market, you are king.
I hope when you think about buying or selling real estate, you think of me and will give me a call. I love to talk about real estate and I always have time for you and your referrals.
With Your Best Interests in Mind,
Hercel Spears and Associates
Copyright© Hercel Spears 2008
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