Is The Housing Boom Coming To An End?

According to an article posted by the WSJ; the U.S. Housing Boom is coming to a halt and it’s starting in Texas. If you’ve been investing in the CNY / Syracuse, NY Market then you know houses are flying off the shelves, there is more demand than product and that’s excellent for flippers and it’s excellent for buy & hold investors who are looking to capitalize and sell some of their portfolio at the top of the market, but with the market coming back down what does that mean for us?

It’s said that the stock market goes through a crash every ten years, but the real estate market goes through a crash once in a lifetime; we experienced our crash in 2008 and I don’t expect to have another crash anytime soon, perhaps just a correction. So…The City of Syracuse itself is not the best performing city when you consider broad economics, the job growth is bad, the unemployment rate is falling but slowly, it’s creepin’ along but it’s not moving up anytime soon.

There are some weird statistics in play here however, over 70% of Syracuse homes are occupied by renters and the last metrics I seen pointed to 290,000 homes in the Syracuse area and just one in every 1,800 homes are in foreclosure. That means Syracuse has one of the lowest property foreclosure rates nationwide.

WHY? WHY IS THIS HAPPENING? Even during the “Great Recession”, Syracuse performed well. I worked with a lot of foreclosures and distressed property owners throughout the bad years and Syracuse was not as bad as Rochester or Buffalo. The primary difference between the other larger cities of Upstate NY and Syracuse is that Syracuse has a large renter base. Individuals that are renting properties in an area like Syracuse are typically in jobs that are not effected by the recession as much as some of the renters that rent in nicer areas of the state or nicer suburbs of Syracuse.

It’s been said by many: buy the worst house in the best neighborhood. If I’m being honest, I would be buying every cheap house in Syracuse right now whether it’s in a good neighborhood or not. The return on these properties is excellent, the tenants aren’t always the best but you can mitigate that by not letting them get out of hand either managing yourself or hiring a company, you likely won’t be building equity over the years beyond simply paying your mortgage, but your investment will be safe. Do your due diligence, make sure the bones of the house are good and take care of the major repair items: Roof, windows, plumbing, and HVAC, and you’ll be fine.