[Homestead] My real estate bias
Gene GeRue
genegerue at ruralize.com
Fri Jan 25 10:34:04 EST 2008
I am certainly biased in favor of real estate investment. I use the
word bias here according to the definition: "a concentration on or
interest in one particular area or subject." My bias comes from thirty-
nine years experience buying and selling investment properties,
helping buyers buy (my greatest pleasure was helping young couples buy
their first home), helping owners sell, running a real estate office,
researching and writing three editions of a real estate-oriented book,
again selling homes, and continuing to research and write about real
estate matters. I have purchased, improved, held and sold many homes;
at about the ten-year point in my real estate career I calculated that
I had made more income from that enterprise than from sales commissions.
I have lived through fast markets and slow markets and up markets and
down markets. California, where I did most of my real estate work, has
experienced every kind of real estate condition, many ups and downs
over the last four decades. I was born after the Great Depression but
I have read about it. Conditions then were far worse than they are now.
The current real estate market slowdown, thanks to the Internet, has
an unlimited number of statisticians, journalists and prognosticators
eager to gain attention. Cheerleaders and doomsayers, each with their
own bias, each with their own paycheck to earn. Choose your expert. I
see this debate similar to the global warming question. One can easily
find "experts" on all sides of the issue. To what avail? As with all
challenges, I see the issue as an opportunity to live more
intelligently.
The only dog I have in this fight, the questions about the current
real estate adjustment period, is this Phoenix house that Chris and I
bought in 2003 as a place to live but primarily as an investment. I
will do as I have always done, wait to sell when I can make my desired
profit. That may be one year or ten years. I have no doubt that, as I
have always experienced, it will have been a good investment.
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