Don’t Base Your Investments on National Indicators
While it may appear like you’re seeing the same home prices and sales in your local market that are being reported in neighboring counties and states, it’s important not to lose sight of the details specific to your market. Markets can vary widely from city to city, neighborhood to neighborhood or, as in the case of Fort Lauderdale condos such as Las Olas River House, Las Olas Grand,WaterGarden, Symphony, Las Olas Beach Club or L’Hermitage; building to building.
Keeping market-specific details, such as price trends, volume and inventory, in mind when buying or selling residential real estate in Fort Lauderdale and elsewhere, is the key to evaluating real estate deals.
Unfortunately, the media has a tendency to generalize and summarize what’s taking place in the real estate market and often times, both buyers and sellers end up making critical decisions based largely on prices and sales. For real-time state of the market, they should be looking at sales volume and inventory trends, which will show how active or soft a particular market is.
To be successful in this industry, you should never look at real estate through a wide-angle lens. Get a more lucid picture of what’s taking place in your local market by breaking it up and examining the details.
You can probably come up with a slew of characteristics that differentiate various neighborhoods within your local market such as Bay Colony, Coral Ridge, Las Olas, Harbor Beach, Rio Vista, Wilton Manors and Victoria Park.
It’s critical for buyers and sellers to understand these characteristics and, in turn, communicate their buying or selling needs with a real estate professional. In order to get the best advice, service and consultation, buyers and sellers need to be particularly selective when choosing an agent that is most knowledgeable about their local market and will be able to best meet their needs.
On a similar note, buyers and sellers should not get too hung up on waiting for the housing market’s bottom. Many buyers, who are now sellers, missed all the signs of the market’s top and it’s highly likely that buyers may also miss the so-called bottom — if they wait around to read about it in the news.
It takes a good four to six months for statistics to report the start of a recovery and it will be too late by the time it hits the media. While it’s easy to see a bottom coming, it’s impossible to pinpoint when it will happen exactly. People that are fortunate to buy at the bottom won’t realize their good fortune until it’s passed.
Making sure you do your homework when purchasing a home is a no brainier, but all too often people make investments based on what the media reports. One size fits all doesn’t apply to the real estate world.
If you are considering buying or selling real estate in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, contact John Sabia at 954-850-2397 or visit the #1 Fort Lauderdale Real Estate website.
