Millionaires See Real Estate as Top Investment for 2014

Found this great article on Bloomberg Personal Finance

Millionaires See Real Estate as Top Investment for 2014
By Margaret Collins and David M. Levitt  Feb 6, 2014 2:45 PM MT

U.S. millionaires see real estate as the top alternative-asset class to own this year, according to Morgan Stanley. (MS)

About 77 percent of investors with at least $1 million in assets own real estate, according to a survey released today by the New York-based investment bank’s wealth-management unit. Direct ownership of residential and commercial properties was the No. 1 alternative-investment pick for 2014, with a third of millionaires surveyed saying they plan to buy this year. Twenty-three percent said they expect to invest in real estate investment trusts, the second-most popular choice.

Wealthy investors are turning to a rebounding real estate market as fixed-income yields remain historically low and equities surge. U.S. commercial-property values rose 8 percent in the 12 months ended Jan. 31, and have jumped 71 percent since hitting their post-recession bottom in 2009, research firm Green Street Advisors Inc. reported today. The S&P/Case-Shiller index of home prices in 20 cities is up 24 percent from its 2012 low.

“After a year where the Standard & Poor’s Index rose 30 percent, some millionaires are moving money out of traditional, long-only strategies to find outperformance, and turning toward alternatives such as real estate and private equity,” said Gary Kaminsky, a vice chairman at Morgan Stanley Wealth Management in New York. “Sophisticated, high-net-worth investors are much more concerned about losses.”

The One57 residential building stands while under construction in New York.
Collectibles ranked as the third-most-popular alternative-investment choice this year, with 20 percent of millionaires saying they planned to buy, followed by private equity at 19 percent and precious metals at 16 percent.

Interest Rates

Wealthy investors see stocks getting expensive and interest rates staying stable or even declining over the next couple of years, Kaminsky said in an interview at a conference for Tiger 21 investors last week in Scottsdale, Arizona. That’s why they are looking more closely at alternatives including real estate for returns and income, he said.

Tiger 21 members, who have at least $10 million in investable assets, increased their average allocation to real estate last year to 21 percent as of the fourth quarter from 19 percent in the first three months of 2013, according to a separate study released by the New York-based group last month.

Will Ade, a Tiger 21 member, said real estate is a particularly attractive investment as stocks show vulnerability in 2014. The S&P 500 has fallen more than 4 percent this year, while developing-country stocks have tumbled on concern that the outlook for economies is worsening.

‘Lame’ Bull

“We had a great bull run last year,” Ade, a 60-year-old geologist, said in an interview today. “I don’t know if the bull is dead, but it certainly is lame right now.”

This year may be the tail-end of attractive investments in property before interest rates rise, said Ade, who has made his money finding oil companies and private investors to fund the drilling of wells. He said he is trying to purchase residential real estate in Miami right now.

“The really good real estate deals are getting harder and harder to find,” Ade said. “Once interest rates start to go up, whether it’s farmland or single-family dwellings there’s going to be huge downward pressure on real estate.”

Foreign Buyers

The Manhattan high-rise condominium buildings One57 and 432 Park Ave., where units have gone under contract for more than $90 million, are evidence of the faith that the very wealthy have in real estate, said Mitchell Roschelle, real estate advisory leader at PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP. Such properties have also attracted international buyers.

Wealthy foreigners have bought high-end U.S. properties for their safety and because they’re denominated in dollars, the world’s reserve currency, he said. This helps domestic millionaires maintain the value of their property investments.

“It creates competition, which drives the price up for everybody,” he said. “The sellers have multiple channels to sell into. That gives you more liquidity.”

Self-storage properties are among commercial real estate investments wealthy individuals are buying, Kaminsky of Morgan Stanley said. Retail shopping centers are seen as less attractive as more consumers shop online through companies such as Amazon.com Inc., he said.

Chilean Fund

Morgan Stanley Wealth Management surveyed 1,004 U.S. investors ages 25 to 75, with least $100,000 in assets, during the fourth quarter of last year. A third of them had more than $1 million.

BigSur Partners, a Miami-based wealth-management firm, has been helping some of its wealthy clients, who usually have at least $50 million, work with institutional investors such as a Chilean pension fund to invest in commercial real estate, said Chief Executive Officer Ignacio Pakciarz. Deals include an office building in Princeton, New Jersey, he said.

“We don’t feel there’s a lot of value in emerging-market bonds, high-yield bonds and highly rated fixed income,” Pakciarz said.

Owning the real estate is attractive because of the expected appreciation of property value and stream of rental income, as well as better control and supervision over the investments, he said. The firm has also bought office properties in Pittsburgh and Boston, multifamily residences in Texas and some industrial buildings for clients, and is looking for more opportunities this year in real estate purchases or lending, he said.

The Iron Eagle Realty Team's mission is to assist you, our client, in the sale and acquisition of real estate properties in the state of Idaho, specifically the Boise Idaho Real Estate Market. Whether you are buying or selling a home, whether it is a foreclosure, short sale or equity property, we handle our customers and clients with empathy and honest truths so they can make informed decisions as they advance in the process of buying and selling real estate that meet specific needs.

PS: We've Helped More Buyers and Sellers than 99.8% of any Local Realtor
Click Here to Search 24/7 for The Best Real Estate Deals in Boise!Click Here to Download Our Free "Selling Your Home" Pre-Listing Plan! Click Here to Pre-Qualify for a Loan Online!

Regards, Michael Hon, REALTOR®CEO, The Iron Eagle Realty Team
Associate Broker, Silvercreek Realty Group
Certified Short Sale Specialist®
Investment Property Consultant
Direct: 208.919.0458 Office: 208.939.9033 Fax: 208.514.1422
www.IronEagleRE.com Michael.Hon@IronEagleRE.com

5 Ways to Pick the Perfect Time to Sell

I found this article on Trulia by Tara-Nicholle Nelson on January 29th, 2014 about when you should think about putting your Boise, Eagle, Meridian or Star home on the real estate market.

Smart sellers spend a whole lot of time and energy strategizing about how to sell their homes for top dollar. They factor in buyer demand, the competition, the job market, the mortgage market and their agent’s track record. And that doesn’t even account for all the time spent understand recent home sales in the area as an indicator of how local buyers will react to this listing.

Many a smart seller will also try to time their listing just right, too. And most often this looks like waiting until they feel buyers are sufficiently ready, willing, and able to pay a good price for the property. One timing consideration that sometimes gets short shrift is this: the calendar.

There’s a season for everything, as you might have heard. And recent Trulia data revealed some powerful geographically-specific seasonal trends in search activity for homes, adding proof to what agents have long known – the calendar portends various shifts in buyer activity, which sellers need to note. If you’re gearing up to list your home for sale, you should definitely take advantage of this interactive tool we’ve created to help you understand how these shifts play out in your area, and connect with your agent to discuss whether and how you might want to factor that into your home sale action plan.

But there are also a number of calendar-based factors you should just be thoughtful about as you put your plan for selling together. Here are a handful of calendars that should be – and stay – on every home seller’s radar screen:

1. The Academic Calendar. Families with school-aged children often find it less disruptive to house hunt in the late Spring/early Summer with the aim of moving in before school starts. Of course, we all know what they say about the best laid plans, so by no means should you let this stop you from listing your home at another time of year. Just know that demand for homes with convenient proximity to strong schools can uptick during the summer school break and around other times of year when kids are not in school.

2. The Tax Calendar. I cannot count the number of relatively unmotivated, looky-loo type buyers I’ve worked with over the years who got sudden, intense motivation from a massive, looming tax bill. For instance, many new professionals will seek to close escrow on homes between the time they graduate and the end of that same year, in an effort to deduct their closing costs and mortgage interest from their newly large incomes and avoid a big tax bill the following April. Similarly, just after tax time in April, a flood of newly motivated buyers come into the market, advised by their CPAs that the mortgage interest deduction is their best bet for not having to write as big a check to the IRS next year.

Fortunately for sellers, more buyers and more motivation means more demand and – all other things being equal – can translate into a faster sale at a higher price than at other times of the year.

3. The Weather Calendar. Many sellers who live in cold-weather climates are aware that wintry weather conditions can dramatically cut down on the numbers of buyers who are out viewing properties. This is why buyer searches for homes on Trulia peak earliest, in January, in warm-weather states like Hawaii and Florida – and not until after the Spring thaws in the Midwest, the South, the northeast and most of the West.

But what’s not as obvious is that the combination of what’s happening on the weather calendar and the specific features of your home can interact to impact your home’s prospects for sale – and its ultimate sale price. Behavioral economics researchers have found that homes with swimming pools sell for more in the summertime than they do in the winter. “When it is sweltering outside, a swimming pool just looks attractive. There’s an emotional connection because it reminds us of fun times we have in the summer,” said Jaren Pope, one of the study’s authors and an assistant professor of economics at Brigham Young University.

So, if you’re selling a home with ski slope access in the summer, you might want to paint the picture of a cozy, fun-filled winter by staging the place with ski gear and other items that help prospective buyers visualize how much fun they’ll have when winter comes. And vice versa -if you’re selling a pool house in the winter, consider making sure it is steamy and heated, if it has those features. Stage it with lounges, towels, lights – anything that showcases the pool to offset cold-weather buyer’s psychological tendency to discount the appeal of a pool in the winter.

4. The Holiday Calendar. During the holidays, many buyers simply prefer to spend their downtime celebrating with family and friends vs. house hunting, especially in locales where the winters are wet or cold. Our listing search data backs this up: nationwide, December is the slowest month of the year for home searches, and November is the second-slowest.

Does this mean the holidays are a bad time to have your house on the market? Not necessarily: some homes just show beautifully when all lit up and tastefully dressed up for the holidays. And the truth is that there is a hardy contingent of buyers motivated to close by year’s end for tax purposes, every year in every market. While buyers might be fewer in number, those who will brave rain, sleet and snow and forego holiday parties to house hunt can be some of the most motivated buyers of all.

5. The Gregorian Calendar (the regular old January through December calendar, that is). A survey just released by Fidelity Investments revealed that 54% of Americans said they typically consider setting New Year’s Resolutions related to their personal finances. This year, 26 percent of respondents said they are in a better financial situation today than last year (only 19 percent said so in 2012) and 28 percent say they are less in debt (vs. 25 percent in 2012).

Home buying tends to be a popular resolution among those with money on their minds at this time of year – and also among people looking forward to career promotions, developing their love and family relationships or relocating to a new home town. Make sure your home is well-represented on sites like Trulia at the beginning of the year (i.e., now!), when these life and financial change visionaries start searching the web for their next nest.

The Iron Eagle Realty Team's mission is to assist you, our client, in the sale and acquisition of real estate properties in the state of Idaho, specifically the Boise Idaho Real Estate Market. Whether you are buying or selling a home, whether it is a foreclosure, short sale or equity property, we handle our customers and clients with empathy and honest truths so they can make informed decisions as they advance in the process of buying and selling real estate that meet specific needs.

PS: We've Helped More Buyers and Sellers than 99.8% of any Local Realtor
Click Here to Search 24/7 for The Best Real Estate Deals in Boise!Click Here to Download Our Free "Selling Your Home" Pre-Listing Plan! Click Here to Pre-Qualify for a Loan Online!

Regards, Michael Hon, REALTOR®CEO, The Iron Eagle Realty Team
Associate Broker, Silvercreek Realty Group
Certified Short Sale Specialist®
Investment Property Consultant
Direct: 208.919.0458 Office: 208.939.9033 Fax: 208.514.1422
www.IronEagleRE.com Michael.Hon@IronEagleRE.com