Is Beachfront Property Really Worth Having?
Well, we came back from Hilton Head, South Carolina the other day where we spent some time looking at how the real estate market was doing there with the housing slump fully underway. I must say that I have always wondered why people buy oceanfront property or even off-beach housing as an investment as it seems so risky and expensive.
What we saw were a lot of rental signs with price tags that still seemed too high (to me anyway). For example, the condo we stayed in at the beach would sell for around 1.65 million -- even though the rent on it was pretty low, nowhere near enough to cover the mortgage even if it rented steadily. Apparently, some investors don't think that prices are too high. According to one real estate paper, Palmetto Previews, baby boomers are looking to buy second homes, vacation properties and retirement venues in the "red-hot South."
In addition to the boomers, big corporations, the paper says, are starting to buy properties in bulk and these corporations include a recent influx of buyers from Canada and Europe, including Eastern Europe. A real estate veteran in Hilton Head, Billy Baldwin, attributes the trend in foreign sales to greater buying power. "The softening US prices combined with favorable exchange rates makes homes here big bargains for many Canadian and European buyers."
But are these properties really going to stay good investments? Potentially not, according to the book Cash-Rich Retirement,
that I am reading for an upcoming podcast.
The author, Jim Schlagheck, says that the recent boom in real estate prices are not "business as usual:"
I sure don't know the answer to that question. But regardless of what happens, I think I'll just stick with renting a beachhouse--it seems cheaper and safer than investing in this market.
What we saw were a lot of rental signs with price tags that still seemed too high (to me anyway). For example, the condo we stayed in at the beach would sell for around 1.65 million -- even though the rent on it was pretty low, nowhere near enough to cover the mortgage even if it rented steadily. Apparently, some investors don't think that prices are too high. According to one real estate paper, Palmetto Previews, baby boomers are looking to buy second homes, vacation properties and retirement venues in the "red-hot South."
In addition to the boomers, big corporations, the paper says, are starting to buy properties in bulk and these corporations include a recent influx of buyers from Canada and Europe, including Eastern Europe. A real estate veteran in Hilton Head, Billy Baldwin, attributes the trend in foreign sales to greater buying power. "The softening US prices combined with favorable exchange rates makes homes here big bargains for many Canadian and European buyers."
But are these properties really going to stay good investments? Potentially not, according to the book Cash-Rich Retirement,
that I am reading for an upcoming podcast.The author, Jim Schlagheck, says that the recent boom in real estate prices are not "business as usual:"
It is the result of an unprecedented surge of people looking for homes and "quick flip" investment opportunities as never before.... Boomers have so far had a resounding impact on consumer spending, investing, and asset prices. They have been a powerful locomotive, contributing to strong economic growth and substantially higher investment valuations.
That, of course, brings us to the million-dollar question: What is going to happen when this same mass of people enters retirement and begins selling off assets to raise cash? How will mass boomer retirements impact asset values?
I sure don't know the answer to that question. But regardless of what happens, I think I'll just stick with renting a beachhouse--it seems cheaper and safer than investing in this market.
Labels: money saving techniques
posted by Helen at 11:32 AM
18 Comments:
Not to mention the hurricanes and tsunamis ...
As one who was born and raised on the coast, except for sunrises, I've had more than enough sand in my waist band. I haven't set foot in the ocean in over 20 years.
I'll take a semi-secluded property in the Appalachians, with forest and furry critters, a stream, and a huge back porch with a tin roof for rainy day naps, no highway noise, and a wood working shop to make Norm Abrams cry like a baby.
That, is heaven on earth. I know that, because I lived there once.
Anything available today is not worth the price paid, unless money is absolutely no object. Perhaps that's why it's falling apart. America is for sale to the highest bidder.
Over the long term economists are predicting that as 24% of the population dies off, someone will have to own the Boomer's assets, including real estate. You can expect there to be "asset bubbles".
As a 30 year real estate professional I advise my clients under 35 not to expect significant appreciation in homes over the long term. That being said, all real estate is local, prices and appreciation are always determined by local demand.
I suspect they're looking for the government bailout when the next hurricane comes through.
With the government's tendency to bailout everybody for everything no matter how crooked, stupid, etc, who can blame them?
The people who are looking to buy now are looking for "steals," i.e. properties that they can purchase from distressed sellers.
So...don't sell if you don't have to. If you have to sell, please by all means, do so.
I haven't been to Hilton Head for six years, but back in 2002 the growth there was insane, what with a tremendous influx of people from the north and Florida. I'm not talking about oceanfront or oceanside homes (whose prices were bananas even then), but the building of residential developments miles and miles inland.
It was amusing a few months ago to read how all the newcomers to SC were going to tilt the primaries to Romney or Giuliani or Clinton. Didn't happen.
As an owner of two beachfront condo units and one house 1 block from the beach in South Carolina, I agree that the prices you quote are insane.
The trick to buying in any resort area is recognizing that prices fluctuate wildly over the years. These are investments that only make sense if your annual income from renting the unit out exceeds your total annual cost including property tax, insurance, etc.
We were patient enough to wait for prices to drop low enough to expect a positive cash flow, and then bought. We've purchased reinforced concrete or cement block buildings that had already survived hurricanes before we bought.
We're doing a little better than breaking even, but our tenants are paying off our mortgage for us, which should pay off in the long run.
Bottom line: investing in real estate is buying a business. If the cash flow doesn't make sense, don't buy!
I don't think any investment in real estate makes sense unless you either inhabit it full time or rent it out full time, because it costs you cash out of pocket every month, for real estate taxes if nothing else.
I would buy a beach house as a permanent residence in a place I wanted to live in but not under other circumstances.
I think most people who own beach houses would find a stay in the Four Seasons beach resort closest to their proposed home both cheaper and more pleasant.
Don't feel so pessimistic about the baby boomers dying and real estate values crashing. At present we are reproducing at somewhat more than replacement rate and our population is continuing to increase.
The boomers are having kids later, and that seems to distort the figures a bit, but by all accounts we are having a bust and then a boom as boomers decide kids weren't such bad ideas after all.
The boomer families who have single children are being more than made up for by immigrant families who often have three or more.
Thus the vitality of America continues. We're not Europe, not by a long shot.
D
Real estate prices will rise during the spring. The spring of which year will be known after the fact.
While the high end (1.5 million plus)has been relatively immune to the current of the current wave of forecosures and devauations, I have noticed that the immune high end has been getting higher and higher.
A year ago, the "immune" segment of the market started at about 1 million. It is now affecting properties up to about 3 million. The only segment in the Los Angeles which remains completey unaffected by the slowdown is the $30 million pus market.
Regarding condo's, there is a joke going around:
Q: What is the difference between owning an condo and having a disease?
A: You can get rid of many diseases before they kill you.
My Sony Vaio VGN FJ270's keyboard is faiing. The computer is about 2years od. You amost have to hit the "L" with a hammer to get it to function. Hence the arge number of missing L's in the above posts.
Your intuition is on target regarding beach-front property,and the comments are as well.
Myths about real estate as investment are common, and the current crop of snake-oil salesman is getting hungry for your money. The best way to make a fortune in real estate is to write a book about investing in real estate.
Do not believe anything ANYTHING written by Kiyosaki. Do not listen to anyone who uses his books as guides to building wealth, or as lessons for living.
That being said: Find a house you like in the nicest area that you can afford. Live in it, love the people in your life, and pay the sob off early. Do not move every 5years. Do not get a second mortgage to "consolidate debt". And do not think of your home as an investment.
Did I mention not to read or listen to anything ANYTHING that Robert Kiyosaki or his foolish followers says??
Dan Patterson
Arrogant Infidel
Short answer to the title question, it depends on what you intend to do with it.
Interestingly, 90% of the population of the US lives within 150 miles of a beach or lake. That would be along the Atlantic, Gulf and Pacific coasts, and around the Great Lakes. The remaining 10% inhabit the sparsely populated interior, but even they are clustered around small lakes or rivers. People do need water to survive, you know.
That said, hey, if you want to live on the beach, go for it. But, besides the dangers of storms Helen points out, remember there is also salt air corrosion, which adds considerably to the maintenance costs of the property and your vehicle as well.
I'm a third-generation Realtor, and I grew listening to my granfather and then my mother discuss real estate, through numerous booms and busts. My mother survived the peso devaluation of 1983, which destroyed the economy of South Texas for 20 years, caused 44,000 foreclosures in the first month alone and forced 1/3 of the real estate companies into bankruptcy in the first 90 days. She not only survived but profited, because she started working almost exclusively with repossessed homes, which hardly 20% of Realtors want to mess with. So I do have some insight into what's going on today.
This current mess we're in, as Schlagheck notes is not "business as usual." It's the result of easy credit, questionable financing, speculative buying, and yes profiteering, not to mention overbuilding. The market is now correcting itself, and in my opinion it's going to take five to seven years. Housing prices will continue to fall until they are more in line with income levels (the buyer's ability to finance and pay the mortgage) and the oversupply of inventory is sold off.
That said, real estate remains a sound investment, if purchased properly. Buy a house to live in it. An older home in an established neighborhood with good schools is one of the best investments there is, because it will appreciate and there will always be a buyer in the market for it. Put 20% down on a 15-year fixed-rate note and live in it for at least ten or fifteen years. I realize that is not always possible in today's world, what with job transfers and the like, but as an investment strategy it is sound. (Warren Buffet lived in the same house he bought for $23,000 in Omaha, Nebraska, in 1954 for fifty years.)
Vacation homes and beachfront condos are nice to have, if you can afford them. Down here, lots of people invest in condos on South Padre Island, where the going rate is around $250,000. I've never seen the sense in that, because Padre Island is NOT an island. It's actually a large sand bar, and one strong hurricane could literally wash the whole thing away and leave all the buildings underwater. So to me it's much more economical and less risky to simply rent or participate in a time-share.
I disagree with the poster above who cautions not to think of real estate as an investement, because that's what it is. I would caution not to think of your house as an asset, but I quibble with economists over that term all the time. An asset generates income. A liability generates expenses. The house you live in does not generate income, therefore it is not an asset. It's a capital savings (equity) account with expenses (PIT, insurance, utilities, maintenance). Over the long run, with appreciation, the capital you recover at the sale of the house will usually have grown, and you will receive an adequate return on your investment. There are always taxes, insurance, utilities, and maintenance expenses, whether built into the rent or ownership costs, but the key here is to focus on the increase in the principal saved.
As for rental properties or commercial real estate, as long as the rent income exceeds the PITI and maintenance costs, it's an asset. If not, it's a liability. While it is true that the rentors or tenants are paying these costs for you, that only applies when you have rentors or tenants. And in today's market, with an oversupply of rental space available, that is a risky investment to make at this time.
There have been some good posts, but a couple of things I noticed were missing. First because real estate can fluctuate a large amount in price a good metric to normalize potential investments is the come up with a price per square foot. Places like New York, London, and beach front properties in very nice locations can go for a $1000/SQFT often times more. Second you mentioned a condo like you stayed in would sell for $1.6 million, and rents would not be able to cover expenses. This could mean one of two things. It could mean the current owner bought it for a lot less and hasn't raised the rents to meat the market demand or it could mean that the investment needs a large amount of cash to work. In real estate I get involved in I like to have equity of at least 30% of the value of the loan. Lastly, one of the things I didn't see mentioned is that there are a lot of tax incentives for owning property. It can be very beneficial for a high income person to set up a property that will only carry itself because it will provide him with enough benefits that his overall cashflow has increased. Additionally there are other benefits like 1031 exchanges. However in those cases a person should consult a professional accountant to see if they'd benefit.
At the beach, I don't care what you have title to, everyone is a renter. The overdevelopment at the beach was made possible by Federal flood insurance. Up until that became available, no one would put a house out on a sandbar because the private insurance companies knew it was insane.
If you'd like you to marry beachfront properties with John Stossel, this is what you'd get.
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