Calling The Bottom - Do I Get A Prize?

Earlier this week, I opened up the Las Vegas Review Journal and ready Hubble Smith’s article “Housing Crawling Off ‘Bottom.’”  In the article, Dennis Smith, housing analyst and president of Las Vegas-based Home Builders Research, was quoted as saying, “It’s obvious that the bottom of the recent vicious housing cycle that has gripped Las Vegas was in 2011.” (Emphasis is mine.)  2011...good to know now, but it would have been a lot more useful to have that information in 2011, or even 2010.  But who could have known?  Well, my investor clients for one, or anyone else that read my press releases and blog posts in 2010 and 2011!

On December 28, 2010, I wrote in my article “Real Estate Investing in Las Vegas Returns to Historic Trend,” “Now that the average trend line has been reached, it seems unlikely that property prices will drop much further.”  Throughout 2011, as local reporters were still lamenting the fall of home prices in the Las Vegas valley, I was warning my investors that the market was heating up and competition for available homes was reaching record levels.  Repeatedly I urged my clients to “buy now” or risk missing the upswing that was beginning.  Some chose to remain on the sidelines, worried about further potential losses, but many, many clients dove in.  They are very glad they did.

As the recent LVRJ article reports, “The median resale price (of a home in Las Vegas) was $139,000, up from $133,000 in November and the 10th consecutive monthly increase.  It’s up $29,000, or 27 percent, from a year ago.”  Not a bad yearly return for someone who purchased an investment property in 2011.  If you missed this opportunity, don’t despair, other opportunities will continue to appear.  But you might want to read my blog regularly.  After all, I don’t think I’m getting a prize for calling the bottom of the market, but if you read my reports, you might find a prize of your own.