Am I Getting Into REI At The Wrong Time :)
Hi,
Being the conservative person that I am (with money), I always seem to get into things too late. I started investing in the stock market in late '99 just before crash.
With all of the top selling REI books on the market, I am noticing a lot of new interest in REI. I'm wondering if I'm, once again, late to this form of investing.
Is this a possibility, or is it just the fact that I'm noticing all the interest because I'm now taking an interest in it? Those of you who have been in this a while, do you notice an increase in RE investors lately or is this just normal churn.
Thanks
I've noticed an increase in the number of people talking about getting into REI, but I haven't seen an increase in the number or people actually doing something in REI.
There are so many different ways of getting into REI that there's really no bad time for getting into it. It's just that some aspects of REI might be more or less difficult depending on various economic conditions.
Research your market, identify the best opportunities, and go fo it.
Good luck.
It may be that you perceive more people to be getting into real estate, where in reality the same percentage of the population is involved as before, but you're now tuned into it more.
The problem with the "dot com boom" was that people were paying for things that inherintly had no worth (such as www.dogbonesonline.com and such). No income, no projected profits, only expenses.
Real estate on the other hand will have worth for as long as people enjoy living and doing business indoors. Granted, certain markets or property types may experience a sort of regional hyperinflation and later have an adjustment, but it is 5-20%, not 800% like the "dot com's". I'm not in this market, but I suspect southern california's inflation will have an adjustment in the near future (1-3 years). If I'm right, might be the wrong time to buy and hold there, but a great time to flip.
Lastly, even if you pay top dollar for a property when the market is at it's peak, you may eat it for a bit, but if you stay in for 10+ years it will end up being a great property. Again, not ideal, but it's also far from a complete failure.
In a nutshell, today is better than tomorrow. The sooner the better. In RE, the more time you have, the more money you'll make. Learn your market and invest accordingly.
So the stock market stung you. I trade the market most days. Long time ago learned that what goes up comes down. So I learned to short stocks and make it going up or down.
The same can apply to real estate. Invest in a neighborhood that is starting down and you can get hurt. Anything you do has risk. Learn to appraise the risk/reward ratio in what ever you do.
As one reply stated here, real estate has value going in and you have every opportunity to establish that value BEFORE you put money on the table.
Sure there may be other investors in your area. Just figure out way so as not to run with the herd. You did that with stocks. Learn what you can about RE and strive to do it differently. You can win.