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Updated almost 5 years ago,
Coronavirus and Real Estate Investing - What is happening now?
There is a lot of confusion about what is going on in the real estate market right now, especially when it comes to investing.
To me, this is following some of the outcomes from 9/11. All of the sudden something happened and put USA's world upside down. Much different situation of what happened in 2007-2008, where we had seen it coming for a while (we were just in denial for a while longer) and it was based on financial and mortgage fall out (instead the economy this time around was doing fine.)
Even though Coronavirus has been spreading for a few weeks now in the USA, it really did not hit home until about 10 days ago, when everything started getting cancelled, shut down, etc.
With that said, I have seen a surge of property owners (especially absentee owners and elderly,) wanting to sell starting last week. They want liquidity (cash) and they don't want to hold on to extra properties (2nd homes or rentals.)
Buyers are slowing down right now and not really jumping in as they are re-thinking their strategy and offer prices. Private lenders are also re-grouping, but I talked to a few of them today and they said that they are working on new rate sheets and lending analysis based on revised possible default rates, but they will start lending again in a few days.
Also a new breed of buyers are looking into real estate investing. These are the buyers that were able to pull out of the stock market in time and have now liquid funds. They are mainly looking for long term ROI (rentals.) Several have approached me last week in this sector.
It is going to take another couple of weeks or so to see things for investors back to a "new" normal. The industry will change to more of a buyers' market and there will be an increased supply of properties.
In other words, don't stop. The real estate investors who have the vision right now and understand what is happening based on facts (instead of getting caught in negativity,) will be thriving even more than previously. A lot of new investors or want-to-be investors are not working right now, with a result in declining competition.