Believe it or not, there are places around the world where the dollar remains strong right now. For those who can afford it, there are abundant opportunities to buy property overseas for bargain prices. If you have ever had an interest in a second home or investment home abroad, it may be worth considering. However, even in your own backyard, there are places in the USA where your dollar will go farther. It only matters what is most important to you.
For many of our viewers and readers, there is a desire to find real property where you can buy reasonably and turn a profit in cash flow or flip cash. It may seem relative to what you are used to, but for example, there are places in the midwest of the USA where you can buy homes cheaper or otherwise get more bang for your buck than say on the coastal areas. While this may not be news to you, in our experience, not many people will buy property more than 40 minutes from where they live.
If it were us, and it was for cash flow or profit (not personal living), we like to ask ourselves what difference it would make how close we are to the location, In our experience, it only matters if you have the team, the demand, the margin, and the structure in place to reap the rewards. If it were us, we would definetely learn about the job demand, the housing demand, and typical terms of real estate in an area. One crucial thing many anxious real estate operators overlook when evaluating a new area, especially a less expensive area, is labor.
Labor is at an all time low for availability in construction trades right now. Even more experienced contractors (we are told) are having trouble finding and keeping qualified personnel. This drives up the cost of housing…among other factors. The shortage also can make it more costly than you anticipate to turn a deal. We won’t say where, but we found a market where the numbers look respectable and cheap, but since there is no available labor, nothing gets done for long, long periods of time. When you add up the delay costs or carrying costs, it was not worth it for us to continue in that market. A lesson hard learned.
Cheap is not always the best answer, but in our opinion, it always is worth the time to look for opportunities where your money can go farther. We hope this helps. We can not and do NOT offer tax, accounting, financial, legal, nor investment advice.