According to all of the recent articles and tv shows, you might think it’s a bad time to buy real estate in the Phoenix metropolitan area. That is not necessarily true – especially when you have the right information before buying and don’t panic in bad markets. Buying a home and real estate is always a great investment for someone who plans to live in it – not a short term investor. And with Phoenix area real estate inventories as high as they currently are, this is actually a great time to buy real estate in the Valley. Obviously other experienced investors feel the same way as they are coming back into this market looking for investment properties in the Phoenix-metro area. Many ask all the right questions and have all the right resources. But others are new to real estate altogether and have very unrealistic expectations that will inevitably result in a bad outcome.

As a long term investment, real estate always makes sense. In fact, anybody with a significant amount of money invested in the stock market might be re-thinking real estate as an investment right now. Just as with the stock market, as long as you are willing to wait out the bad times, you will always make money. I don’t know anybody who lost 3-5% in their real estate values last week, but people heavily invested in the stock market saw instant, huge drops in their net worth because of real estate fears. In reality, whether your money was invested in real estate or stocks last week, you didn’t lose anything if you didn’t panic and sell. In other words, both stocks and real estate will always increase in value over time, making them great long term investments, so there is no need to shy away from real estate, even in the bad times. Short term investors, however, have to really know what they’re doing or they end up buying high and selling low, which is exactly what you DON’T want to do. Anyone who ‘flips’ properties knows that you generally set your profit when you buy the property, meaning that if you don’t buy it for the right price, there’s not much you can do to make money. And to know the right price, you have to know the market and know what you’re doing overall.

Like anything in life, if it seems too good to be true, it probably is. The people buying into get rich quick schemes are the ones bailing out now and being foreclosed on. The smart real estate people and experienced real estate agents thrive even during the bad times.