Investing in Real Estate - the Scoop

Investing in Real Estate - the Scoop!

by Robert Nachman

Well, the scoop on real estate investment came about accidentally; no-one kindly put together a market projection simply for investors. Luckily though, a private mortgage insurance company has had to research and project the future risks in the realty market for their own insurance purposes.

This week PMI published their national 'risk list', which ranks cities of America by the relative riskiness of owning a property in those main realty markets. The company needs this kind of information - albeit guesswork and projected analysis - before they decide whether or not to underwrite a home loan.

However, for real estate investors, and those wondering if they should buy and where, it is another little tidbit to throw into the formula of where might be a good place to buy realty.

The table starts with a one per cent reckoning that an area will not de-value in the next two years and moves all the way up to as high as a ninety-four per cent chance that it will!

If you are an active investor, one who likes to keep a close eye on the financial situations and 'pounce' when the chips are at their lowest, you will probably want to earmark the cities who are on the falling list. This way, when prices are rock bottom, you can clean up. Sounds heartless - but it is also good business.

In these falling areas, sellers may be already motivated as some of them took a beating in the 2007 drop, but the forecast projects that within the next two years, they will be even more 'motivated'.

Of course, often the places near the bottom were the ones that had inflationary prices in the mini-boom, and they now have to drop down again. The top ten riskiest markets were all high flyers during the crazy boom - some cities in California, Arizona, Nevada and Florida.

The riskiest place in the nation right now, according to PMI is in California. Riverside-Bernadino is given a 94% chance of suffering declining prices. Las Vegas is a surprising close second on the table, with an 89% chance of declining prices. Los Angeles has a 79% ranking and Fort Lauderdale is at 78%.

Moving over slightly Arizona is next up, with Phoenix and Mesa coming in at 83%; as both these areas are prime retirement spots, there could be a bargain to pick up there soon.

These are the nation's top possibilities for decline in house prices in the opinion of PMI. It is probably not too surprising to anyone that the Lone Star state is carrying a lot of the success stories on the real estate chart.

If you are a more conservative investor, and you look for steady markets with solid employment and cash-flow backgrounds, you may be interested in PMI's 'safe' investment areas.

Five of the Texan towns are in the top ten. Reasons for so many may be partly because Texas's economy is growing and it has maintained moderate residential prices, but also it never did get caught up in the crazy boom of the last few years.

Among good steady investment towns are Dallas, Fort Worth, Austin, Houston and San Antonio. However, Texas does not hold the only top honors; the east coast also gets a good rating.

Other cities with a less than one percent chance of realty price decline are listed as: Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Charlotte, North Carolina and Kansas City, Missouri.

Well, that's the scoop, it's up to you what you do with it!