Is it a good time to invest in real estate?

By Todd Gifford

According to many sources, including USA Today, Business 2.0 and CNNMONEY.com, residential and commercial real estate development over the next 25 years will be unprecedented. With our current sluggish market that seems hard to believe, but the statistics are there to prove it.

As most of us are keenly aware, “there has been an impressive amount of construction in the U.S. over the last three centuries. All told, we’ve built more than 300 billion square feet of homes, offices, factories and other structures.”

“But according to new studies from the Brookings Institution and Virginia Tech urban planning professor Robert Lang, we’re about to pick up the pace –it will take just 25 years to erect the next 200 billion square feet, which we’ll need to accommodate 70 million more people and to replace homes and offices erased by everything from disasters like Hurricane Katrina to plain old obscelescence.”

“If you think the real estate boom of the past decade was bounteous, peek a little further over the horizon: Researchers estimate that the massive buildout will constitute a $25 trillion development market by 2030, more than twice the size of the U.S. economy today.” (Quotes from Business 2.0 article, authors Paul Kaihla & Krysten Crawford)

Long term predictions for real estate are phenomenal. In the short term, two well known economists in the state of Florida (Hank Fishkind, of Fishkind and Associates and Shawn Snaith, director of UCF’s Institute of Economic Competitiveness) stated independently at the beginning of June that we will begin to see recovery in the market this year. They also predict real estate price increases over the next 18 months and beyond. Fishkind even went so far as to say that the real estate slump is a done deal.

So, is it a good time to invest in real estate? Absolutely! The time to buy real estate is when inventory is high, provided you are buying property in locations that are desirable, unique and poised for growth. The Vilano and South Ponte Vedra Beach area meets all these criteria and then some. The Vilano Town Center, with the soon-to-be constructed Publix Shopping Center will certainly add significant value and desirability to this area.

So what strategies work well for real estate investing in this market? Call or e-mail me and I will explain the many profitable strategies that will allow you to capitalize on the current buyer's market!

 Copyright © 2007 Todd Gifford