Chris Smith of EquityScout.com has a great article about how short selling may be the new “flipping”. He uses the facts that housing markets are slowing down throughout the country, and that flipping is “so 2006″ and a lot of the glamor associated with it seems to have faded, as reasons for his beliefs. While there isn’t a consensus that housing markets are necessarily going down, I (along with Dr. Housing Bubble) certainly know that prices aren’t increasing the way they were a few years ago. And even though it’s easy to make money in any market if you use the right profit strategies, there does seem some movement toward profit strategies other than the standard flip/rehab deal. I think Chris is right on the money with this prediction.
Also check out Chris’s excellent article on working with Realtors.
The market has changed, and it makes sense that successful investors are adapting their tactics to respond to the slowing of appreciation in the industry. There are certainly a lot of short sale opportunities out there, and as REO inventories rise, banks will be more and more willing to deal.
-4MySales
I agree. We’re also seeing a lot of investors leaving formerly “hot” markets, so the increased supply of REOs combined with the lower number of investors will create many good short sale opportunities.