Real Estate Today.

Many people out here have no idea what is happening in the residential real estate market today. For the first time in many of our lives we found out that the housing market is just that a market. Houses can go down in value too. Even our government and banks seemed to forget that there is a reason it is called the housing market. The prudent thing is to purchase a home in the neighborhood that you want to live or raise your family in and to plan on being in that home for at least 5 yrs or like any other investment you should probably not be in the market. We now have went from people buying any house they could find to I would prefer to rent. Nobody can call the bottom with complete accuracy but we have fallen more than 50% in most Phoenix markets so we have to be closer to the bottom than the top. We also have record low interest rates at the exact time that the market is down. This is probably the best time in your lives to be buying that home you would have died for just a few short years ago and in some cases you can live there for less than you pay for rent.
 For those that have secure jobs and extra savings this is also a good time to be looking at investing in income property. There are a lot of single family homes that will have positive cash flow even after paying a management company to handle the day to day things. We see investors coming in and buying distressed sale houses and renting them out and having returns above 15% without the tax savings and the potential for capital gains. While the banks are paying less than 1% on money market and Wall Street going who knows where this seems to be a pretty good risk. Notice there is RISK in all investments including the current housing markets.
We at the Burkhardt Team would be happy to discuss these topics and more with anybody that is interested and will continue to get you current information and ideas. Please forgive us for any inaccuracy's and feel free to give us topics you would like us to blog on.