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Then you will either make a fortune, or you will be the sucker that gets burnt badly as prices continue to fall. Vegas posts their odds for winning. Unless you do your homework, you don't have any idea what will happen.
You mentioned gut feel. The road to the poor house is lined with people who used the gut feel approach to investing. For every gut feeler out there, there is someone else who has done the hard work to figure out what is going on and is waiting in the wings to take advantage of such people. Does it pay off sometimes. Yes, but we are talking about luck now. Like people throwing some dice.
Anyway, I really want to see Charlotte prosper. I hope to stay here another 5 to 8 years before moving on, so I'd like to see a successful, thriving Charlotte for many years to come. Right now, I just don't see a lot of positive signs.
OK. But let's take this a little further and put emphasis on your point that this is not a discussion and debate forum.
I will agree to: 1) No positives signs ahead. OK?
2) No discussion or debates just a bunch a ppl that are close to supporting CLT at all times. We get together once a month and plot our responses over pitchers of beer at Rock Bottom. OK?
Now, I would like you to tell me: 1) What city do you in a more positive light? What city might have a better shot down the road?
2) How can we improve our forum and still state with honesty what we feel?
Maybe, I don't know, it doesn't warrant a debate?
So, give me your thoughts. I'll read them later or tomorrow PM. In the morn I'm going to catch myself some big blue claw crabs (try LOL)
Then you will either make a fortune, or you will be the sucker that gets burnt badly as prices continue to fall. Vegas posts their odds for winning. Unless you do your homework, you don't have any idea what will happen.
You mentioned gut feel. The road to the poor house is lined with people who used the gut feel approach to investing. For every gut feeler out there, there is someone else who has done the hard work to figure out what is going on and is waiting in the wings to take advantage of such people. Does it pay off sometimes. Yes, but we are talking about luck now. Like people throwing some dice.
Paragraph #1 --correct. Been studying hard and keeping up with my "homework"
Paragraph #2--correct but more applicable to stocks, bonds and the commodity market such as gold, oil, etc. None of which I devote one minute of my time of one $ of my money.
So, in summary, Lumbollo, any advise, ideas for me? How to make money in this market, not a market like 2007? How to be ahead of a curve? Buy at a dollar today a patch of dirt with some bricks on top of it and sell it for $1.30 in 4 months?
Willing to listen to any and all ideas.
john
Damn fine post John. As always, I haveta spread some rep around before I can point you. Maybe if there weren't so many downer, negative, and one-sided posts on here, I'd have some other users to spread points to!
But I digress...
I am obviously 100% with John. But, if I've learned anything from these "times," it's to understand where others may come from. A specific example would be talking about unemployment rate. Yeah, I see numbers, hear reports, read posts...yadda yadda yadda. Me, being a numbers guy who also played baseball back in the day, I read an unemployment number of say 10% and think "ok, so we're batting .900--that's DAMN good." However, I'm well aware of the batter who's struck out and can't get back into the game to improve their batting average (read: someone who's lost a job and can't get another). For them, the average is .000. That sucks, I concur. But the touchy statement to make here, and I'm treading as lightly as I can: for the rest of us, things are still pretty good. We have jobs, the city is nice and clean, has trees, is close to mountains, has nearly every store/restaurant you could need/want...etc. In other words, all the reasons most of us moved here for are still here. Again, I acknowledge that if you lost your job, it's probably pretty darn hard to enjoy those things. But they're still here.
If you want to see a truly screwed city, go visit Orlando (and the vast majority of surrounding communities). They lead the nation in foreclosures. They're in a world of hurt when it comes to tax income and sustaining basic public necessities. Nearly every house is extremely upside-down when it comes to loan-to-value. And here's where it gets real touchy feely fun: now with all of these foreclosures and cheap options showing up in ALL neighborhoods down there, you're getting some really low rent type individuals moving in next door to some folks who thought they paid to live in an upscale neighborhood--but now they live next to a degrading dump of a house that resembles a used car lot and a pit bull breeding facility mixed into one. I wish I were joking here.
And I won't even play my trump card of Detroit where the average house price is not around $18k. That's right, for the price of a spiffed up Kia, you could own a piece of Detroit. Wanna talk bad and crummy?
But again, I digress. It's late and my mojo is all worked up in defense of a truly awesome city that I moved to and I'll stand by as long long as I see it fulfilling what I moved here for: a better place than before.
I am a mortgage underwriter by trade. I have underwritten mortgages since 2000, both prime and subprime, first mortgages and now seconds. I have seen enough applications to "know" when something is wrong. Everything could look perfect, all the right documentation provided, etc.; but, something about that app is not right. It is a "gut" feeling.
Previously, my boss used to say, too bad. The app looks fine, so, you've gotta approve it.
Almost every time, something, somewhere went a little bit wrong...and voila! the issue surfaces and it is crystal clear that this application needs to be declined. Sometimes, it was after it was approved/booked and then the loan went delinquent. But, 98% of the time, there was an issue to surface at some point.
A recent meeting with upper management says that they are now looking more closely at those "gut" feelings and listening more. They are now developing a special team to assist underwriters when they have that "gut" feeling about an app.
So, when a real estate investor like John tells me that he has a "gut" feeling, I'm gonna listen.
Steve, you are right about Florida. However, recent appraisals from different parts of Florida are showing the beginnings of a stabilization of values. To me, that is good news. Maybe the tide is slowing?
Things are not great here. No doubt. Plenty of people are out of work with little to no hope of finding jobs. Foreclosures are still fairly rampant. But, I don't see the city drying up or anything. People may have to relocate, or take more menial jobs. But, at the end of the day....whenever that is? I think that Charlotte will survive quite well.
Steve, you are right about Florida. However, recent appraisals from different parts of Florida are showing the beginnings of a stabilization of values. To me, that is good news. Maybe the tide is slowing?
.
Not really. Yes sales are up, but for the lowest priced homes. Foreclosures in Florida, Vegas are still killing the market...
Here in Charlotte, its pretty simple.
We are a transplant town. We built our growth on transplants. When the markets of CA, NY/NJ started tanking in '05, we were late to the party, but inevitably we followed. Now we won't start picking up until areas w/more income start bouncing back. And who knows when that will be? NJ/NY still have sales going down YOY and prices falling.....
Prices in Charlotte will continue to fall as foreclosures increase and sales rock along the bottom for time to come. Prices cannot goto zero, so at some point we will get to a balanced market where qualified buyers equal sellers...however that is a LONG time away.....not brain surgery to figure this out as some have said for a long time here....
Sorry CC, I'm hesitant about going by someone's gut feeling just because they are in a cetain business which profits from the RE market improving.
Also, John doesn't have a history of posts here that show he was in tuned w/prices or where the market was going over the past year or so.
There have been tons of realtors/investors/speculators whatever you want to call them on here that have 'gut' feelings on here. When you present all the facts and ask specifically how things will improve, you get nothing back from them. Just "I can't argue w/what you present, but I have a gut feeling that things will improve..."...
For example, have you ever heard a realtor tell you its NOT a good time to buy???
So, in summary, Lumbollo, any advise, ideas for me? ....
john
Until this point, I have not seen you ask for advice, but rather opinions on what you seemed to have already decided. From re-reading your OP, that seems to be that most people are clueless about this economy and because you are more enlightened, you plan to make a fortune off of it. (paraphrasing) The only reason I responded to this thread is because you asked for an opinion of this and I gave my thoughts. Now if you really want some advice, I will give some, but given what you said I will do so against my better judgement. Like all investing, real estate investing is complicated and something that takes a lot of work to pull off.
However I will comment in general terms on what I see with your plan in what looks like once in a life time deals, in Charlotte in order to make some quick money.
Why is opportunity there? Ans: Because prices are falling. Opportunity comes from the idea that time to buy investment is when prices are low. Everyone knows this, but contrarian is only one smart enough to take advantage of it. Thus, good time for contrarian.
What caused this to happen? Several answers. Ans A: This is expected cycle. After business boom, there is a bust. Things will get better soon. Ans B: Buyers lost common sense (or never had any) and borrowed too much. Bankers, developers, & HGTV made suckers out of them, now contrarian will too. Only few have common sense now. Ans C: Fundamental issues with economy, big huge reset coming. Contrarian loves A, can live with B, doesn't want to hear C.
When does fortune roll in? Ans: When buyers are beating down contrarian's door to buy property that contrarian smartly bought when no one was looking.
This plan works assuming the problem is not Ans C. Lets keep in mind that a lot of the over building came from exactly the same concept in reverse. Prices were rising and all the contrarians ran in and started to buy up property at low prices so they could sell them later at high price. It's exactly the same idea. i.e. Once in a lifetime deal. The reason they got burnt is because they never asked themselves question number 2.
Now, if you assume that Ans C, something fundamentally wrong with the economy, is correct, then there are certainly opportunities that present themselves because of it. But they certainly are not based on such concepts of scared lemmings, believing that CLT can't just fail, is better than peer cities, wasn't like this in the past 12 years. You really have to go figure out what has happened then develop a plan based on that.
Location: The place where the road & the sky collide
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Quote:
Originally Posted by CouponJack
Not really. Yes sales are up, but for the lowest priced homes. Foreclosures in Florida, Vegas are still killing the market...
Here in Charlotte, its pretty simple.
We are a transplant town. We built our growth on transplants. When the markets of CA, NY/NJ started tanking in '05, we were late to the party, but inevitably we followed. Now we won't start picking up until areas w/more income start bouncing back. And who knows when that will be? NJ/NY still have sales going down YOY and prices falling.....
Prices in Charlotte will continue to fall as foreclosures increase and sales rock along the bottom for time to come. Prices cannot goto zero, so at some point we will get to a balanced market where qualified buyers equal sellers...however that is a LONG time away.....not brain surgery to figure this out as some have said for a long time here....
Jack, I agree on the transplant thing. However, I suggest that you refer to the market that you are referencing as North Jersey. Real estate in South Jersey is very different. In fact, when I had to go up, recently, I heard on the Philly news that real estate in South Jersey is picking up some.
I suspect that cheaper markets will begin feeding Charlotte's real estate market before North Jersey/NY (The New York metro area). This will result in more activity west of Charlotte, since that area has cheaper real estate.
One would have to be very young not to realize or know from experiencethat economic trends, regardless of their severity, change. Charlotte has a higher unemployment rate because it has been an extremely prosperous city and tons of people came here searching for jobs when jobs were fading away. Now we are stuck with thousands living here on unemployment as well as locals. If we were a city with little growth, our unemployment rate would be much lower. Nevertheless, it is just a matter of time before we start our climb back to prosperity..
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