How many articles have you read recently that outline the doom facing the real estate market, especially in hard hit areas like Buffalo and Detroit? Personally, I lost track of the number dozens ago. I remember seeing one photograph in particular that really set a backdrop for the grim scenarios. Someone had taken a series of photos along a street in Detroit and stitched them together to create a panorama showing literally dozens of abandoned homes in a row. It was as though an apocalyptic event had struck the motor city and cleared out entire neighborhoods. Nationwide, there are thousands of foreclosures underway and houses are being stripped of plumbing, wiring, fixtures and anything deemed valuable before being abandoned. Mortgage brokers are being hung in effigy and accused of causing the mess through predatory lending, while banks are paying the price for lax underwriting. Checking real estate listings in some of the worst hit areas yields homes being sold for as little as several thousand dollars. To many people, myself included, sights like this are depressing. Who’s ultimately to blame for the mess? I don’t know and I don’t want to waste my time second guessing what happened.
Instead of bemoaning the situation and grumbling about our decaying society, I decided instead to look for the silver lining and think of the real estate market as an opportunity. Before I started throwing my money around wildly, I did my research, looking into the advice being offered by a number of prominent real estate investment advisors. I took my time and didn’t rush into things because even under current conditions we’re still talking about a lot of money at stake (my money!), and I had concerns that some of these so-called gurus were pedaling the kind of advice that had gotten some of these distressed homeowners into trouble in the first place. Critical factors that I was interested in included.
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• Credentials. Does the person actually have a solid background in real estate, or are they exaggerating their domain knowledge?
• Availability. I wanted to be able to speak to my advisor in person, and not have a representative reading to me from a script.
• Testimonials. Do they list testimonials and just as importantly, do these belong to real people I could check with, or are they just text written by marketing.
• Active In Real Estate. I don’t want to deal with an advisor who has moved their own money out of real estate to work full time speaking at seminars.
• Range. The investment advisor should be familiar with a wide range of real estate opportunities and not limited to a single specific type of strategy.
