The Contrarian Investor

Back in May of last year, I ran a post about the state of the housing market as indicated by the caliber of Investor I was coming across in my practice. So many of these speculative buyers were lacking the basic understanding about how to invest in real estate, and were exhibiting ideas and strategies evangelized by the late-night infomercial type of real estate guru. I predicted that this was a sign of a topping market, but only that it was a sign. I did not call for a crash in housing. I spent the following posts explaining how dynamic our economy was, and why it was so difficult to predict these things...

But back to my point. The market has been pretty flat in the last year, and this type of amateur investor has all but vanished from the marketplace. But any investment professional can tell you that opportunities exist when you think against the grain. It can be tough to do, but it often pays.

With the tightening credit availability in housing, a lot of would-be buyers are going to need to turn back to renting homes. This puts a squeeze on rental supply, and causes a trickle-up in rental costs. Keep this in mind as you look for return and cash-flow on your investment properties. The opportunities will be out there...

RealEstateJournal has another interesting article today about a particular niche in Real Estate Investing - the college campus play...