When I logged onto Amazon.com to check out the new releases in business books, this headline jumped off the page: Real Estate Sale: Save up to 39%.
The headline was followed by this: Whether you're a real estate professional or a first-time home buyer, find all the guides you'll need for becoming a landlord, finding a mortgage, selling properties, and investing in one of the most time-tested and popular strategies for building wealth, all at up to 39% off for a limited time.
Among the deals:
- Flipping Properties: Generate Instant Cash Profits in Real Estate, which is 33% off.
- How to Be a Quick-Turn Real Estate Millionaire, which is 35% off.
- Investing in Duplexes, Triplexes, and Quads, which is 35% off.
- Why We Want You to Be Rich, which is 37% off (this book would be a ripoff at 99% off, in my opinion).
Granted, most books are on sale at Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN). That's why I love it. But it does seem a bit unusual that they're advertising especially deep discounts on real estate books. One possible conclusion: people aren't buying them. If we go with the theory that the bull market in real estate was in fact a speculative bubble, this makes sense.
Early on, professional real estate investors made huge profits investing in real estate in red hot markets like Miami and New York City (and on Cape Cod, where I live). As these gains earned media attention, others with less real estate investment experience wanted to get in on it. How did they learn about it? Much like the throngs of lemmings who gobbled up day-trading books in the late 1990s and early 2000s, they probably headed to Amazon to pick up primers on making a quick buck. Then, the real estate bubble began to deflate. Numerous high-rise developments in once-hot locales stand unfinished, and subprime lenders like Novastar (NYSE:NFI) have seen their stock prices decline over 80%. Suddenly, real estate isn't quite so sexy to the novice investors -- and they've stopped buying the books.
Of course, it's entirely possible that this is just a normal promotion on Amazon, and has nothing to do with an overstock of real estate books left over from the boom. But I still wonder: if the sale is because of a lack of interest, is this a time to look anew at buying real estate, now that the pigs have been slaughtered?
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
3-18-2007 @ 11:43AM
nora said...
I work in Real Estate, and my opinion is; If there are any really serious buyers investment or not? This is the time to take advantage of this market... Rent out and cover your mortgage until the market comes back... Either way is a win win situation, You will make money as an Investor and when the market turns around which I think will happen sooner than expected. Flip it and make even more.....
3-20-2007 @ 1:47AM
KS said...
"This is the time to take advantage of this market"
Are you really suggesting people "invest" now in real estate? In my local market, the cap rate hasn't been favorable for several years, and I'm not about to buy an "investment" property when the market is falling. And, will the market really turn around "sooner than expected"? Anyone curious about this should check the OFHEO index and how long downcycles typically last. Real estate takes a long time to slowly grind to the bottom. Get the most info, and make the best decision.
3-20-2007 @ 1:00PM
gringo in miami said...
We haven't nearly hit bottom--Japan's housing bust followed a boom just like the one we just finished. It took over a decade. At the end prices had done an RTM--return to mean. That will happen here too---real peopel can't afford to buy and speculators are gone.