Market Trend Direction - When To Buy\Hold And When To Flip

[Daniel Highsmith]

I'm selecting a Farm Area to send direct mail to. I have two areas that i'm comfortable with. After some initial research on Trulia i can see the median sales price for Area A is trending down

Area B median sales prices are trending up over the year

My question is this: Should i target the down trending market for a possible low priced buy\hold rental? Or should i target the upward trending market for a possible "buy low, sell high" flip opportunity?

I plan on getting a listsource list (possibly absentee owners) and sending to one of these markets on a monthly basis. Any info is much appreciated! Thanks, BP Community!

[Michael Nicholson]

yeah comp sales from the Mls are going to be your best bet but many of us aren't able to get that. I like to use Redfin because I can filter recently sold from the last 3 to 6 months. I usually look on the map to find the sales that are in the same neighborhood and have the same features (brick built vs stick built, year built etc). I then try to reduce those comparable properties to $/sqft and find he average and then I multiply that average by my square footage. I also try to look at the recent sales and see if they were valid arms length transactions made by retail buyers or if they were for some other reason, filtering those out. That usually gets me a pretty good idea of what a property is going to appraise for. 

Another thing I have found is that a lot of counties actually have recent sales on the county websites, and you can usually grab those off the website in excel spreadsheets.

Now back to comp sales from the Mls, you could possibly find a realtor at your local real estate investors club that might be willing to pull comps for you. Or find an investor friendly agent that works with investors that would be willing to work with you.