Buying in Southwest Florida

[Sean Lechelt]

I'm new to real estate investing and am currently looking at some smaller multi family homes in the Fort Myers area. My question is, is the market too high right now? I noticed some places are selling almost twice as high as they were 5 years ago. I just don't want to get dealt a bad hand, but I also know I can't time the market. Any advice?

[Peter Davis]

@Sean Lechelt

The best you can do is gather as much information as you can and make a sound decision based on that, and some gut instinct. I think much of our SW Florida market is being driven by Covid concerns and effects: I'm working with a number of buyers looking to leave the more densely populated areas like New York, New Jersey and Miami, but people are also realizing they can work remotely from anywhere and don't need to live near their job. And then you have the demographic effect of baby boomers moving from cold climate states to Florida which is nothing new. I see strong growth for our area, and in particular Cape Coral where there's available land to grow and it's more affordable than other parts of Florida near water. 

This isn't the run up to 2008 when bad lending practices drove that meltdown. I was flipping houses then and got a stated income $780K loan to buy a home. Ahhh the good ol' days... until they weren't.