Real Estate Timing - Not Prediction

It’s important to be clear that when I talk about using real estate timing to analyze market cycles to time your real estate investing I am NOT talking about predicting the real estate market. A prediction is nothing more than an educated guess, or sometimes not even educated. Remember Jim Cramer? “Bear Stearns is Fine! Don’t move your money from Bear. That’s just being silly!”

Jim Cramer talks about the stock market but it really isn’t that different from real estate. As soon as you try to make a prediction you are moving into the field of speculation and guess work. That may work for some people in real estate investing, but not for me.

The market momentum charts at REMarketStats tell us a market’s current actual situation. What is going on right now in that market. What makes this useful is that this information precedes public knowledge and behavior typically anywhere from 6 to 12 months. Particularly during the peak and bottom of the cycle when we want to take action. So we aren’t precicting with real estate timing, we are making use of market analysis data that tells us what is actually going on before most people know about it. This allows us to buy and sell at optimum times, the times that are going to make us the most money. Want to learn more about how real estate timing and market momentum works? Take a look at the real estate timing videos on our website. We show you actual examples of markets as well as how to interpret the market momentum charts.

Making Money with Real Estate Timing

In my last post, I showed an example of how you can make money with real estate timing, in fact I showed actual numbers of how much more you can make by using real estate investing timing than if you just followed the mass media. If you haven’t seen the video yet, it’s worth watching. Unless, that is, you aren’t interested in making 3 times as much money per deal.

Today I’m going to show you another example, in Austin Texas. We look at the real estate timing market momentum charts and then compare them to home prices so you can see how the market momentum charts show you When to Buy and When to Sell. Then we compare how much you would make if you bought based on the mass media and how much you would make if you bought based on the real estate analysis charts. How does an extra $50,000 sound?

But I also add an interesting and lucrative twist in this example that can make an extra $75,000! This clip is worth watching just for this twist.

Make Money with Real Estate Timing

I’ve talked a lot about real estate timing and market indicators in other posts. I’ve explained how real estate timing works.

But I want to show you today how you can use real estate timing in real estate investing. And how that will make you money. You want to make money don’t you?

In fact, it’s quite easy if you know the one key element you need - timing. It shows you When to Buy and When to Sell. Knowing when to buy and sell makes you money, because you can buy low and sell high. Not only that but the real estate timing charts PRECEDE public and mass media awareness. That way you can buy before you miss out on the home appreciation and sell before everyone else is selling so you don’t have to sell when prices are dropping.

Would you believe that you could make 3 times as much with real estate timing using real estate indicators than if you bought based on the mass media?

It’s hard to believe but if you watch this video you’ll see a clear example of how you can make money in real estate with real estate investing timing AND it shows how much MORE you can make.

Real Estate Timing and Market Indicators - Price

I’ve been talking about assorted market indicators these last few posts and how they affect real estate timing. Timing is critical in real estate investing, it can make the difference between making a profit or taking a loss. It can also make the difference between making a profit and making a really big profit.

When you take all of the market indicators we’ve been talking about and look at the real estate analysis charts at REMarketStats you can see when the right time to buy and the right time to sell is for any given real estate market.

The reason we know this works is because of today’s topic - PRICE.

When you look at the real estate market indicators, the market momentum charts show us the best times to buy and the best times to sell. These charts show historical data as well. When we look at these market momentum charts as we practice real estate timing we can then compare those charts to the average or median price for that real estate market. As we’ve said before, the real estate timing charts precede public and mass media awareness. So these indicators tell us when to act and then shortly after we can see the action reflected in the average or median price! In other words, if the indicators tell us to buy then shortly after we see home prices go up. If the indicators tell us to sell shortly after we see home prices level out or go down. We get in before missing out on all the appreciation and we get out before a market turns down!

The proof is in the numbers and the average or median home price charts give us those numbers. This is how you make money in real estate! Buy when it’s time to buy and sell when it’s time to sell. It’s so simple and yet the historical data shows us that it works. The key element you need to do this is real estate timing. Want to see an example of how it works? This video clip shows you market momentum charts and also shows you the average home price and you can see that if you follow the market momentum charts and buy when they say buy and sell when they say sell you are going to make money in real estate.

Real Estate Trends - Employment Market Indicators

Yesterday we talked about Unemployment as a real estate market indicator when it comes to real estate timing. Today we are going to focus on employment. But wait, don’t they amount to the same thing?

Not necessarily. We look at both unemployment and employment for real estate trends because they can differ.

Employment is the actual number of jobs in a particular real estate market. Unemployment is the percentage of the workforce that is unemployed.

Here is how they can differ. If a particular real estate market is experiencing a large influx of population, in other words many people are moving to the area either because it offers the promise of jobs, or it’s a retirement hotspot or something like that, you might see the unemployment rate go up for a while. Why? Because people moved there but don’t have jobs yet, or retirees don’t plan on getting jobs. The result is that the unemployment rate doesn’t look as good. Conversely, what if an area is in population decline because the job market really stinks? People are moving away from this market to other markets to look for jobs. The market in population decline would actually see the unemployment rate go down because people are moving away.

But when we look at the employment numbers we can complete the picture. Since employment shows the actual number of jobs we can see that an area that is in population decline that might see an improvement to unemployment would still be showing us a drop in the actual employment. The same goes for a market with an influx of people that showed unemployment going up. When we look at the employment numbers we can see the number of jobs growing.

Both employment and unemployment are longer term market indicators when it comes to real estate investing timing. They show us the overall health of a real estate market over a longer term period. If employment and unemployment market data is solid in a market then we can expect that market to recover quicker in downturns and perform better in upswings than a similar market with poor employment and unemployment market indicators.

Real Estate Trends - Market Indicators - Unemployment

Today we are going to look at the unemployment market indicator in our series on market indicators when it comes to real estate timing.

Unemployment as a real estate indicator is taken from the unemployment rate. This is expressed as a percentage. This is quite common in the news media, we’ll see the national unemployment rate or the unemployment rate for a particular area. For example, the unemployment rate for the state of Michigan in May was 14.1%, in other words, 14.1% of the available workforce was jobless in May.

Clearly when it comes to demand for real estate the lower the unemployment rate the better. After all if a market is shedding a lot of jobs, not too many people are going to be looking to take on the commitment of a mortgage. With real estate timing and real estate trends, unemployment is a longer term indicator. This means that in the short term trends may temporarily act contrary to unemployment data. You might see this happen in the case where a previous surge in employment resulted in an overbuild of housing which caused a temporary surplus.

It’s important that we look at the actually unemployment data for a particular MSA not just state level or regional or even national. Real estate markets are local so when it comes to real estate investing we need to focus on the local real estate trends.

Real Estate Timing - Market Indicators - New Home Permits

In continuing with the series on looking at market indicators and how they affect real estate timing I want to look at new home building permits today.

New home building permits are the number of permits pulled in an MSA each month for the construction of new single family homes. This is how we gauge demand for new construction housing in real estate markets. As orders for new homes go up real estate markets respond and builders start building more homes. The addition of new construction housing stock in a real estate market reflects the overall performance of the market. If the demand for housing stock is growing we would see it reflected in the real estate timing market momentum charts for that MSA and the momentum calculation would be above the zero line. If the demand for new construction housing is shrinking we would see the real estate timing chart’s market momentum calculation drop.

When you look at the market momentum charts for multiple market indicators you can see the direct correlation between the market momentum and the values of homes in the MSA. Take a look at this video on real estate market indicators, titled Real Estate Investing - How Market Indicators Work, to see examples of how we look at real estate trends in market momentum and how the real estate timing charts tell us When to Buy and When to Sell

Real Estate Market Indicators - Existing Home Sales

In my last post I talked about the importance of the real estate indicator population growth when it comes to real estate timing. Today I want to look at the market indicator existing home sales.

This is a very important indicator when we are trying to gauge the overall health of a real estate market. Existing home sales shows us the demand for housing in a real estate market. Existing home sales is the actual number of existing homes (in other words, not new construction) that have sold in a particular market. It isn’t homes pending or homes available for sale, it’s the actual number of homes that sold.

When you perform market analysis in real estate investing you need to measure the current demand against the past performance to see how a market measures up. When we calculate market momentum we do just that. The market momentum of existing home sales shows us the current level of buyer demand as a measure against the past. If the momentum is up it means that buyer demand is stronger than it was, if the momentum is down it means demand is weaker.

We have to keep in mind that it takes more than one indicator to prod us into action. We want to see multiple indicators pointing towards similar action before we jump in and buy or put our real estate investment on the market to sell. But, gauging this level of buyer demand by using existing home sales is a very important indicator to watch as part of your real estate market analysis.

What are Real Estate Market Indicators

At REMarketStats when we talk about real estate timing we talk about using market indicators to analyze real estate markets and calculate a market's momentum. What exactly are these market indicators we are talking about?

Market indicators are key data elements that allow us to gauge the health of a real estate market. We look at population growth, existing home sales, new home building permits, average or median price, unemployment and employment, the average price of new construction and also, when available, time on market or month's supply. We take all of these indicators together to gauge the health of a real estate market.

I'm going to run a series of blog posts talking about each of these different indicators and how they affect real estate markets and real estate timing. This is critical for real estate investing, it allows you to know When to Buy and When to Sell.

Today let's take a look at Population Growth. Population Growth gives us a great overall long term outlook for a market. If an area is seeing continuous population growth this will lead to a demand for housing over the long term. Areas with flat population growth or that are in population decline are less likely to see large increases in the value of real estate. Population is not a short term indicator, an area may still see shifts in the housing market even if the population is swelling. For example, if an area gets overbuilt too quickly to meet future demand, it may take time for the population growth to catch up, resulting in a temporary buyers market.

Why Real Estate Timing

If you’ve been reading the REMarketStats Blog, you know that I’ve been saying that real estate timing is more important than real estate location. This is contrary to what you’ve probably always heard. After all the golden rule of real estate has always been location, location, location.

So why would I say that real estate timing is more important? Let’s take a look at it. If you buy a house at the bottom of the market and then sell it to someone else near the top of the market, are you both making the same amount of money? Of course not. You will be the person who makes the money, but the person who bought it might actually lose money when the market shifts. Did the location of the house change?

No. The house is still located in the exact same place.

The location had nothing whatsoever to do with the amount of money you and the future buyer made. The real estate timing is what changed. After all you both bought the exact same house, just at different times.

That is why I say real estate timing is so much more important than real estate location. If you time your real estate investing to buy at the bottom of a market that is about to go back up you are going to make a whole lot more money in real estate than if you buy a property just because it seems like it’s in a good neighborhood.

Real Estate Timing – Knowing When to Buy and When to Sell

At its heart, real estate investing is quite simple, you want to buy when prices are cheap and hold until prices are high and then cash out. You can make a whole lot of money with this very simple premise. The trick of course is in knowing when to buy and when to sell. That is what real estate timing is all about.

There are a lot of people say that there is no way to know when a market is near its bottom and poised to go back up and there is no way to know when a market is near its peak and ready to go down. Most people just listen to the mass media and if they see that everyone else is buying they buy too and if everyone else is selling then they sell. The problem with this approach is that the mass media and everyone else doesn’t know when you should be buying and selling! You see most people follow the herd mentality, they act once they see everyone else acting. The mass media really does nothing more than report on everyone’s actions. If everyone is buying than the mass media talks about how great the market is and says you should be buying. Then when a market is crashing and everyone is selling the mass media says you better sell before prices go down more. But is this approach going to make you any money? NO! If you buy when everyone else is buying then you’ve missed all the appreciation. And if you sell when everyone else is selling then you’ll be watching prices drop as you are trying to unload your investment.

That approach just doesn’t work. As real estate investors we need a better solution to real estate timing. We need to know when to buy, just as a market is about to go up so we can capture the most appreciation. We need to know when to sell, before a market reaches its peak, so we can take our profit and get out before the market turns down. There is a way to do just that, it’s called market indicators. If we look at certain real estate market indicators and calculate a market’s momentum we can actually see whether it’s time to buy or sell in any real estate market. Market momentum is an extremely powerful tool in real estate timing.

And it works!

REMarketStats has analyzed over 200 real estate markets and used historical data going back as far as 15 years and when the market momentum says buy we see home values going up shortly after. When the market momentum says sell home values level out or go down. The numbers don’t lie! This is the kind of invaluable tool a real estate investor needs, it tells us when to buy and when to sell and it has been proven based on years of historical data to make money. You can literally make tens of thousands of dollars more per property just by knowing the right time to buy and the right time to sell.

It took years of research to bring this real estate timing data together but it’s available now to real estate investors at an unbelievably affordable price. To learn more about how market indicators and market momentum works watch this real estate timing video.

Real Estate Investing - Real Estate Timing

In yesterday’s post we took a look at how to do a real estate market analysis. Today we are going to look at a second one but a little quicker. This time you’ll be able to see how easy it is to do real estate timing on a real estate market.
No matter what your investing strategy, be it rentals, rehabs, lease options, land contracts, foreclosures, wholesaling or pre-construction you’ll see how real estate market analysis can help you determine the best strategy for a particular market based on real estate timing. Have you ever wondered why certain investing techniques, say rehabs for example, work better under certain market conditions than others? There is a whole lot more competition for fewer deals under the wrong conditions but the deals are much easier to do under the right conditions. Real estate timing can show you the best real estate investing technique to use based on your market’s current conditions. That way you don’t have to struggle to find the deals and then struggle to do your exit strategy. You’ll make a whole lot more money if you use real estate timing to choose the right strategy.

Real Estate Investing - Market Timing

For real estate investors to successfully practice real estate timing, they must be able to analyze the market indicators for the real estate markets they are interested in. This clip shows an example of how a real estate investor can analyze the market momentum charts available at REMarketStats to practice real estate timing.

The key to real estate investing, to make money in real estate is timing. Real estate investors need to know when to buy and when to sell. Market indicators help provide the “when” of real estate investing. Real estate market analysis using the proper market indicators can provide real estate investors with information that precedes public knowledge and mass media awareness. that is what makes real estate timing so valuable.

Real Estate Analysis - only useful Market Statistics need apply

When it comes to real estate timing you need to do it with real estate market statistics that are actually useful. Unfortunately most market statistics published by the media have pretty much no value at all in regards to real estate timing. The result is that the average real estate investor has no way to time their real estate investing.

At REMarketStats we use a moving average to calculate our market statistics to account for seasonal and other types of variations that can crop up in real estate statistics. Then from that moving average we calculate the market momentum. This is what actually allows you to look at the real estate trends and practice real estate timing.

Let me give you a comparison. If you were to just look at some published statistics for a real estate market you are interested in, for example - existing home sales, all you would be able to do is a direct comparison from one month to another. This month versus last month, would be one way to compare. You can see whether sales are up or down from this month over last month. But what good is that really? Pretty much none. That information doesn't give you any indication of real estate trends or whether home prices are likely to be going up or down. You need market statistics that are actually useful so you can do real estate timing and actually make money in real estate.

Here is an article that talks about the moving average calculation and why most real estate market statistics are useless.

Real Estate Timing

Happy Friday! We are at the end of the first week now of our official launch. We went live on Monday and we've been getting some pretty positive feedback so far. Our goal at REMarketStats is to help as many people as we can with real estate timing. It's very important, we learned that lesson the hard way. To help people we've got to get the word out about real estate timing and how it can help real estate investors.

I think we've gotten off to a pretty good start so far. If you search YouTube for real estate timing, you'll see that we now have 5 videos on the front page. And we have 2 videos on the front page of Google videos for real estate timing. It's a great start and we look forward to continuing our growth and getting the word out. I encourage all real estate investors to share the link to our blog and our website and let other's know about real estate timing. Sign up for our newsletter on the REMarketStats homepage.

Thanks for a great first week!

Bob

p.s. By the way you can now follow us on Twitter too - our Twitter name is REMarketStats

Real Estate Investing - Real Estate Cycles

Real estate cycles are a critical component to real estate timing, something that anyone in real estate investing should know. Understanding and timing market cycles successfully can help make you a lot of money in real estate investing. By understanding the market cycles you can practice real estate timing - where you buy when prices are down and sell when prices are high.

The key to this is you have to be counter cyclical in real estate investing. The average buyer buys near the peak of a real estate market cycle and sells near the bottom of a real estate cycle because they follow the herd mentality. but that's not how you make money. In real estate investing you have to break from the herd mentality with real estate timing by using the real estate cycles. This is how the wealthy make their money. They buy when everyone else is selling and sell when everyone else is buying.

Real Estate Investing - When is it Safe to Buy

The question on most everyone's mind these days is when is it safe to buy again? It affects regular home buyers as well as those in real estate investing. Most of us want to try to do real estate timing because we don't want to lose money right away. Of course the answer to that question varies depending on where you live and what you plan on doing with the property once you buy. I'll talk about exit strategy in another post.

Real estate markets are local. No matter what you see in terms of national stats they really don't mean anything for your local real estate market. Local markets are affected by things like local home sales, local new construction and local employment. One area in the country can be going up, while another area can be going down. In fact, that is exactly what is happening right now. There are a lot of areas going down right now, but some are either flat or going up. That means that in some places it is already safe to buy. Of course, we all hear about in the news how every place is going down. Or they'll try to run some headline about how the recession is over, but if you live in one of the areas that's going down I imagine you find those pretty hard to believe. That's certainly the case where I live - where home prices have dropped another $15,000 in the last few months.

So the answer of when it's safe to buy again depends on your local real estate market. The only way to really know is based on what the market indicators look like in your market. Is the market momentum showing a recovery or is it still saying to wait. Obviously you don't want to buy if your market is still going to drop by tens of thousands of dollars more in home prices. You'll wind up massively upside down within a couple of months. I think it is definitely worth asking the question of when it's safe to buy. After all, really knowing when to buy and when to sell is the essence of succesful real estate investing. This is one of the great things about the real estate market analysis charts at REMarketStats. You can ask the question of when is it safe to buy again and look at the charts for your area or other areas you want to do real estate investing in and find the answer in the real estate timing charts.

Real Estate Analysis

The key to real estate investing, to make money in real estate is timing. To do that we have to perform real estate analysis. Real estate investors need to know when to buy and when to sell. Market indicators help provide the "when" of when to buy and when to sell in real estate investing. Not just any market indicators can provide this "when", however.

Real estate market analysis using the proper market indicators can provide real estate investors with information that precedes public knowledge and mass media awareness. That is what makes real estate market timing so valuable. REMarketStats.com is dedicated to helping provide you with the tools you need to properly time your real estate investing purchases and sales. Real estate market analysis is an invaluable tool for all real estate investors. You can make tens of thousands of dollars MORE per property just by timing your real estate investing. This video demonstrates exactly how market indicators correlate to real estate appreciation.

Real Estate Investing Timing

Most people say that the key to successful real estate investing is location, location, location. But the truth is that location doesn't matter nearly as much as timing, timing, timing. If you buy at the right time and sell at the right time you are going to make a whole lot more money than if you just buy based on location.

Knowing the proper timing, however, isn't so easy. The mass media doesn't know. If you look at the headlines in the past they preach to buy when a real estate market is going crazy - usually just before it's about to go down and long after all of the gains have been made. Then after it crashes they say you should have sold 12 months ago.

The average real estate agent doesn't know. They tell you to focus on location, location, location and that there isn't anything you can do about timing.

So how can you properly time your real estate investing? With Market Indicators. By properly analyzing the right indicators and looking at a Market's Momentum you can buy when a real estate market is down and sell when it's high. That's how you make money in real estate.

Welcome to the REMarketStats Blog

Hi, this is Bob with REMarketStats. I want to personally welcome you to our blog.

Our main focus here is, of course real estate market timing, but we will also look at some other real estate investing topics as well.

As a real estate investor I have done rentals, rehabs, wholesales, lease options, bought bank owned REOs, put together short sale packages and done pre-construction deals. I have also made just about every mistake imaginable doing all of those different techniques. ;-) I am also a licensed real estate agent as well and have done conventional listings and sales.

My favorite real estate investing technique is without question rental properties, when purchased with the proper real estate market analysis. I like these so much because you can double up on your profit centers with both monthly cash flow as well as appreciation. This is the key to long term financial wealth, how you reall make money in real estate.

I welcome you to look around the REMarketStats.com website, there are free articles and video training clips. We will regularly be posting more as well so be sure to check back.

-Bob
www.remarketstats.com
Your Source for Real Estate Market Timing