by Greg Rand on May 13, 2012
I am dedicating my radio show today to Jacksonville, FL as the best example of a real estate market going through short term pain, but poised for awesome long term gain. Here are some of the support material I will be using for the show. I post them here so listeners can do their own research and see for themselves why I am making this recommendation.
Here is a great article about the expansion of the Panama Canal, and how the port in Jacksonville is poised to become one of the largest in the US.
Here is an article on their successes attracting new business.
Here is a chart that shows the prices of single family homes in Jacksonville over the last ten years.
Jacksonville Median Sale Price
We have a new sponsor for the show called Jacksonville Wealth Builders. They contacted me after hearing me recommend Jacksonville a few months ago on the radio show and my segment on Fox Business. Gregg Cohen, the founder, is a great guy and an inspiring entrepreneur. We will interview him next month on the radio. After meeting him and getting to know his company and business model, I invested my IRA in property in Jacksonville through his company. They have a very tight system for finding properties, rehabbing them, renting them out and managing them for investors. It’s the most turnkey approach I have seen and a fantastic option for investors who want to choose the right market, even it it means being a thousand miles away.
Here is the link to Jacksonville Wealth Builders website.
by Greg Rand on May 7, 2012
Our industry needs to rethink our core mission. Homeownership and owner-occupancy are two different things and it’s time to make that distinction. Here are a few facts that need to sink in to the collective mindset of our industry’s leaders:
• If 27% of all the home sales in 2011 were investor purchases, then 27% of all the commission checks earned by NAR members were made possible by non-owner-occupant home buyers (investors).
• We show concern and feel empathy for people who have endured the hardship of foreclosure, or had to sell short. But what is our message to them nowadays? The same as always. “You need to buy a home” No, they don’t. They should rent. We should help them and appreciate the non-owner-occupant who owns that home and rents it out.
• Consumer confidence in our product is strongest with non-owner-occupant home buyer these days. Investor purchases surged by 65% in 2011, while owner-occupant sales dropped by 16%. Are we doing enough to encourage them? Most of our effort seems to consider them competition to our core constituency. That makes no sense.
As we sit here today, the federal government is inventing new ways of tampering with the housing market by selling foreclosures to cronies on Wall Street who will convert them to rentals. The sweetheart deals being offered to those cronies have strings attached. Namely, to turn some of them into rent-controlled units. Instead of individual investors owning these homes, we will be dealing with Wall Street financiers and their puppet masters in Washington. Does any of this sound like a recurring nightmare?
If there is one thing we can all learn from the debacle of the last decade, it’s that an unholy alliance of Washington and Wall Street can only do bad things for the housing market. Our industry association has proven it has influence over Washington. What power are we bringing to bear to stop this dangerous government intervention? What are we doing to protect individual investors from unfair treatment by government? Sadly, not much.
It’s time to take on our rightful role as champions of housing, and not just homeownership, lest we leave the door wide open for others to control our destiny.
To sign a petition to encourage our leaders to fight for individual investors, please fill out the form below.
