Fast Profits With Real Estate

It seems that short term real estate investments have replaced the stock market as the vehicle for the average American to quickly achieve great wealth. A story in today’s New York Times (“Speculators Seeing Gold in a Boom in the Prices for Homes”) describes how many folks have plunged into the preconstruction real estate market, buying homes and condominiums that are not even built with the intent of selling them quickly for a fast profit. The website www.getpreconstructionprofits.com will send you a how to video for just $197 in case anyone is interested. I have attributed the rapid increase in home prices to low interest rates, but it seems like that’s only part of the reason prices have risen and stayed so high. With conservative investments earning only 3% or 4% and many still using their capital loss carryovers from the stock market plunge of just a few years ago, real estate certainly looks like a solid investment. And over time it is. The problem is that the appreciation in property values is neither steady nor constant. At least twice in the past twenty years, real estate prices in the Greater Lowell area have plunged, causing great losses for many property owners. Let’s hope it doesn’t happen again anytime soon.