From 2005 to 2007 and for the first year…

From 2005 to 2007 and for the first year of my show on Fox from late 2007 into 2008, I used to say one thing about real estate as an asset class whenever it came up, “There’s never been a better time to sell real estate than right now.”   I used to write a weekly piece for the TheStreet.com back in 2006 and 2007 called “This won’t end well” and I often featured real estate charts that went straight up and were supposed to continue going straight up forever.   I used to mock Ben Bernanke and others who were convinced that since we’d never had a nationwide downturn in real estate that it could never happen.

I used to face endless mockery, eye-rolling and consternation from fellow anchors, commentators, pundits and investors who were absolutely sure that I was an idiot for telling them to sell real estate because they’d get a better chance to buy at much lower prices after the, at that point, coming real estate crash. I often pointed out to viewers at home that almost all the people who ever make it on national news TV to talk about business and real estate are almost always going to be homeowners….and therefore not objective on that topic.  Ask someone who’s owned Apple for years about Apple and they’re probably going to be a little more in love with the stock than is healthy.  Same dynamic was prevalent in real estate for all homeowners back at the top of the real estate bubble when it was truly conventional wisdom that home ownership is a great thing all the time for all people in every case.  (Not so much, eh?)

Well, fast forward to 2011, three years after the nationwide real estate markets topped out and crashed in historic fashion and guess what…I’m a real estate buyer.  I’m buying land in NM for 70% off what it was listed at in 2007.  I closed on acreage yesterday after having bid 30% under the current marketprice for that same real estate that was already marked half off where they had listed it and where it was changing hands for back just four short years ago.

I’m by no means convinced that I’ve nailed the exact bottom in real estate out here in NM, even at the huge discounts I’m buying land at right now.  But I am very confident that ten, fifteen or twenty years out from now, I’ll have some huge increase in values in the land I’m buying for up to 70% off today.  Real estate was in a bubble and I had the patience to wait for that bubble to pop.  Now I have to have the patience of a decade or more, but I do believe there’s some outrageous opportunities in many local real estate markets around the country for those of us who listened to their mom and dad when they quoted that old saying back in the day that “Patience is a virtue.”

I must have said the words, “There’s never been a better time to sell real estate than RIGHT NOW” on national TV a hundred times from 2005 to 2008.  Let me go ahead and start saying the words, “There’s never been a better time to buy real estate than RIGHT NOW” on my national platforms in 2011.

As for my stock portfolio, the rally action into the close got us back into the black for the day.  Respect the streak, right?

Thanks for reading and see you tomorrow.