As any successful investor knows, the trick to making money is to buy low and sell high. This advice, of course, is easier said than done. How is an ordinary person to know when a particular market has hit a low point? After all, prices that look low in March may decline further in April and May. It would seem that only a crystal ball would be able to shed real light on the issue, but as in much else in life, appearances can be deceptive.
In some markets, it is relatively simple to know when prices are far below a "normal" level. While no investor can know precisely when ‘the low’ has been reached, it can be somewhat obvious to recognise that current prices are in the low ranges. This is precisely the case with many areas of the US property market at this time.
How to recognise "low tide" in the housing market
One key marker of low ebb in the property markets is the existence of short sales. These are sales for which the bank has agreed to take a price lower than the current amount left on the property's mortgage. In essence, the bank is agreeing to sell at a loss. One short sale in a neighbourhood may be an aberration, but when there are several on the same street and dozens scattered across the town, it is a definite indication that banks have lost confidence in a neighbourhood.
What stops prices from continuing to decline?
In the short run, prices may continue to slide. In the long run, however, they are extremely likely to recover and put investors in a positive situation. The reasons for this are obvious, and mostly rely on the fact that housing is not like other investment opportunities.
Gold is often thought of as a "safe" investment, but there are very few reasons why gold is truly essential to human beings. If the collected peoples of the world decided, tomorrow, that gold was not worth having, prices would plummet and nothing could probably stop them. Housing, however, is inherently different, because it represents a resource that people really do need. The only long-term reason why demand for housing stocks would normally remain low is declining population. However, in the case of the United States, it is continuing to increase steadily, year after year, even as many nations in Western Europe are experiencing the opposite effect.
With more people comes more demand for housing. This explains why the US property short sale market provides a strong investment possibility. A confluence of challenging economic factors have kept housing prices low for years, but the natural tendency of people to need a place to live, whether as tenants or buyers, argues strongly for its eventual resurgence.
Where to find strong short sale opportunities
Some parts of the United States are not good prospects for the short sale investor. Washington DC, for example, has retained a robust housing market throughout the economic challenges of recent years. States such as Nevada, California and Florida, on the other hand, can potentially provide today's buyers with a much better return on their investments, because prices right now are lagging so far behind the historic highs reached in the early 2000s.
While no investor can anticipate all future events, anyone who invests in US short sales can have the confidence that comes from knowing that prospects in this market look positive at this point in time.
