Seperating the Pros from the Amateurs in Real Estate...

This current real estate market can all be summed up with this statement from one of the great real estate investors of all time, Sam Zell.

"First you Have the Investors, Then You have the Imitators and Then you Have the Idiots".

Sam tells you like it is and he expects his employees to do the same. They don't kiss butt like some other TV hound hogs wanting to tell the world how great real estate is to always buy and that it always goes up in price. In fact... most people don't even know who Sam Zell is and that includes a lot of real estate agents. Check this interview out and what one of the current employees told the HR director for Sam's company -->  http://www.chicagorealestatedaily.com/cgi-bin/news.pl?id=30967 during their interview.

"What the $%##@%% are you wasting my time for then??" as stated by Stephanie Pater during an interview.

My southern compradre was 34 during that interview... Stephanie is somebody I certainly would be happy to talk to if she ever makes it out to Las Vegas.

That's not a Real Estate Investment

Real estate investing is much more complicated then banking on future appreciation and due to this hard lesson learned it's put some markets into turmoil. Imitators bought up everything they could, Idiots followed along and did the same thing and builders built away to meet this artificial demand.

Unfortunately, many of the homes purchased by the real estate investor imitators were being bought to bank on future appreciation.

Result? Prices for real estate artificially went up. Builders built more then the true demand for housing and now we have a mess. The real estate investor imitators created higher mortgages for everybody and higher property taxes. When home values did not meet their speculation projections we know what happened next.

Now we are faced with all of the foreclosures and large inventories of vacant homes. And... a situation where lenders are extremely hesitant to lend money even on properties that have been slashed in half from the peak bubble years.

How much money has really been lost? Impossible to tell when you think about everybody who has been paying too much on their mortgage due to the artificial increases in prices that were created.

That brings us to the Government Bailout Plans that so far have been using the money for an attempt to keep home values up. There is a little more to the story then just trying to save Main Street and just remember all of the tax revenues that were created during the lax lending days. But... that's for another story.

Paul Francis, CRS
Prudential Americana Group
Las Vegas Real Estate
702.592.3058

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