Happy New Year everyone! This morning I told someone 'happy new year" and they replied 2009 just can't get here fast enough... That seems to be the feeling a lot of people have right now. So, here's to a better next year that this one has been.
That brings me to the current real estate market here in what is currently a very cold and snowy Cochise County Arizona. Well, like most places, our market has been slow. Many buyers are having trouble getting loans and many others are backing out of deals because their previous one fell through. Sounds pretty bad, right? Not really.
While certainly banks have instituted much more stringent criteria for loans, qualified buyers are still getting the loans they need. That's actually a good thing. As many long-time professionals in the real estate industry did, I cringed when lending criteria became so lax anyone with a pulse could get a mortgage. Often multiple mortgages at the same time. All of this lead to an eventual "feeding frenzy" in real estate...over buying...over building...over leveraging.
Even when rational real estate professionals were cautioning investors about buying too much or leveraging too much more and more people were "jumping on the bus." As is usually the case with any market, once this happens it's only a matter of time until the party's over. In short, this is what happened in real estate in 2008.
Of course, hind-sight is always 20-20 and it's easy to look back and see where we all went wrong. So, what do we do now?
No question there are a lot of great deals in real estate right now. Locally, we're seeing prices on land we haven't seen in many years as sellers who bit off more than they could chew are now desperate to unload properties at just about any price - even if they have to take a loss. We also have an increase in sellers willing to carry the note on the property themselves in order to make a sale.
Personally, I think that as people realize real estate prices won't fall forever, just as they couldn't rise forever, we'll have more buyers coming back to the table. Plus with interest rates on mortgages falling again more people will again qualify for mortgages.
As I've said before, real estate, just like any other market, is cyclical in nature. All markets rise and fall. Yes this has been a fairly disastrous fall we've experienced, but the rise was also dramatic, fed by greed and a lack of oversight on the part of banks making loans to people that never should have gotten them. So, while it will undoutably take longer than the normal cyclical change for us to return to a normal market, it will happen.
My advise is if you're thinking about buying real estate right now, go ahead and take a look around. You'll find some tremendous deals, very flexible sellers, and perhaps even a bank willing to make a loan.
So, Happy New Year Everyone! Let's make 2009 a great one!
Thanks for reading.
Kellie Fitzgerald
cell 520-507-1027
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
We are here in the year. It has mellowed out a little and maybe, just, maybe the market it continue it march out of the hole.
Hi Richard, Thanks for reading and sharing your comments. Yes, it does seem as though the real estate market has started, at least, bottoming-out. So, maybe we're through the worst part of things.
Post a Comment