Customer Reviews

Timing the Real Estate Market : How to Buy Low and Sell High in Real Estate

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Even after many years in the business, I found Craig Hall's book Timing the Real Estate Market to be full of useful and valuable industry insight. Obviously real estate, as well as other investment vehicles, is all about timing: evaluating local trends and identifying the stages of each cycle. Anyone, from the most experienced to the novice, can refresh and learn more about the unique real estate trading arena. Craig Hall's years of experience have paid off, and the advice and real life examples from both his successes and challenges can be helpful to anyone seeking knowledge on real estate timing.

In Timing The Real Estate Market author Craig Hall makes the complicated process of buying low and selling high remarkably understandable. While no one can buy at the exact bottom and sell at the exact top, using Hall's tips will enable you to confidently buy low and sell high most of the time.

Timing The Real Estate Market is very different from other real estate investing books. Most real estate investing books only tell you what to buy and how to buy it. Hall's book is the first to tell investors when to buy and when to sell. Other real estate investing books say the only way to go is buy and hold till you die. Hall's book shows that conventional wisdom is wrong and that investors are often much better off buying in order to sell.

There are many real estate moguls that know what Hall knows. But Hall is the only mogul who is generous enough to share these insider tips with the masses.

Most real estate books talk about how to effectively purchase and/or manage properties, discussing cash flow, financing and tax benefits. And that's important, because that's the primary way to control your investment. But the author's belief is that usually, the biggest driver of total return is the one thing you have the least control over, market appreciation. So, if you can't control it, you must learn to read the market and time your moves accordingly. That's where this book comes in.

The author actually goes so far as to state that investing for cash flow is a myth of the industry. Whether you agree or not is not worth debating because it completely depends on your situation and goals. If you read the book you'll see that he clearly works with commercial properties and large developments, which is probably not what most readers are dealing with. So, clearly he has a different perspective on the industry. But let's just get past that and focus on market timing, shall we?

I appreciate that the author admits that he has been both lucky and unlucky in market timing. Some reviewers seem to mistake the author's frank tone with a dependence on luck. I think he's just drilling in the point that every investor needs to understand that risk and reward are unavoidably connected and even the best due diligence will not pay off every time. Like it or not, luck is always involved. But if you do your homework, you'll find that luck is on your side more often.

Key ideas discussed: National trends of inflation, interest rates, and "flow of funds"; Local trends of job growth, migration, path of progress, and new construction; How all these trends interact and balance each other; Contrarian strategy ("buy when there's blood in the streets" and "sell when everyone wants to buy"); Momentum strategy ("buy when prices are going up" and "sell before prices start to go down"); His thoughts on the current market (written in 2003).

I mostly gave this book four stars because it gets a little redundant at times. Sometimes, there is more storytelling to the examples than needed to make the point. And Chapter 6 takes ~25 pages to go through each of the seven market trends for each of six property types when most of the seven trends affect the six types in very similar ways. Rather than restate it six times, he could've taken half the time and just focused on how the six property types are affected differently or uniquely, rather than restate how every trend affects every property type. Also, Chapters 8, 11, and 14 were quick summaries of the basics of buying, holding, and selling to make sure everyone is on the same page. I almost skipped these 50+ pages, but he did mix in a few good nuggets that gave me a different perspective, so I'm glad I didn't. But I think the subtleties of market timing would've already been lost on anyone that needed such a rehash.

Overall, I was fairly pleased with this book. I'm sure everyone has their guesses and assumptions about how to read the market, and this book put mine into a solid context. For such a potentially math-heavy topic, this book is surpirsingly non-technical. That did disappoint my geeky side a little, but on the flip side, it's an easy read.

I purchased this book, along with a batch of others, realizing that real estate might make up a significant portion of my asset allocation strategy in the near- and long-term future. Having lately purchased real estate with full knowledge that I had made a gamble vs. making a wise decision, my goal was to objectively broaden my personal knowledge of real estate for more stategic ways to handle future transactions.

What I didn't do was conduct research beyond the user reviews given for the books on Amazon.com. Therefore, I based my purchasing decisions only on the Amazon.com reviews.

Additionally, (and, perhaps, luckily) I had no experience with the lofty world of "get-rich-quick-real-estate gurus." Word is that Mr. Hall was merely "lucky" in becoming rich; quite frankly, the vast majority of the book's content is Mr. Hall giving his own personal anecdotes of, really, just chalking it up to luck and circumstance. Had I known this earlier, I would've been a bit more suspicious of the value of material behind the book's title.

With these stated assumptions, my decision to purchase this book was based on the "anecdotal" reviews (a grand total of "5"), all who gave 5 stars, to this book, with this next yet most important assumption: that, once I finish this book, I will add to my investment toolbox a vast array of specific formulas, equations, charts, and patterns, historically and scientifically proven-- to the equivalent of being able to plug them into Excel, and help computationally determine what my next moves should be.

I mean, with a title of this book, it's a safe assumption, yes?

Unfortunately, all I found was a regurgitation of high-level economic summarizations that, quite frankly, were nothing more than a reminder list of intellectual common sense.

In plain English, what was described in the book is common sense to anyone who's a savvy, sensible investor of any type.

Really, the book can be easily summarized into the following: gauge your real estate purchase according to inflation (largely a non-issue), interest rates, inflow of cash into real estate investments, job growth, migration, community redevelopment, and construction. Oh yeah, and value appreciation and depreciation are always cyclical, and always throw in a dab of luck.

Who this book is *really good for*:

1) Those who believe that values in white-hot areas won't decrease at all, and who need a little sobering; and

2) Complete real estate novices.

After reading Craig Hall's excellent book, the most important thing that I learned is this ...

You can be a market contrarian - and try to buy real estate at the absolute low point in the market cycle - or you can be a momentum investor - and buy after prices have started to rise off the depressed market bottom.

This is excellent strategic thinking. There is no better, safer, and more profitable way to buy any investment asset than to buy into a market where blood is deep in the street.

Good book. I recommend it.

Robert Campbell
Author of "Timing the Real Estate Market"

Among the excess of real estate investment books available, only a small sampling effectively deals with the fundamentals of market analysis. Timing the Real Estate Market is head and shoulders above most real estate investment books that focus on either sizzle over substance or overly simplified singular property analysis. Craig Hall details his strategies by looking at the key elements of local and national factors that drive real estate values.

Craig Hall is a speculative buyer; his entire strategy focused on buying low and selling high. For those looking for long term buy and hold ideas or high equity cash flow returns, this book is not for you. Hall is an astute investor with an alluring mindset. The book is built upon the notion of knowledge over risk, grounded by an ideal Hall explains with: "There is much to be said for intuition and luck. But relying on luck without knowledge and skill is risky business." Hall suggests accomplishing this by analyzing real estate from seven key trends: inflation, interest rates, flow of funds, job growth, migration, path of progress, and construction. He details how to assess and incorporate each trend into your analysis and provides an abundance of examples to support his reasoning.

At a minimum, Timing the Real Estate Market will provide you with much better insight into market forecasting from a real estate perspective. Hall's strategy is strictly for those endeavoring to flip properties for short term gains and his book offers an excellent analysis of the fundamentals needed to succeed in this area.

I liked this book mostly because of its realistic philosophies. This topic is especially filled with the get rich quick accounts of quick flips, short sales and unrealistic dreamy profits. It is nice to see how proper timing, smart finance and guts get it done. Especially market timing is an excellent insight.

This book feels like the author just wants to give back a little insight that he learned over the years, not just sell countless titles and suck people into seminars. Another note. The friend of mine that recommended it to me liked it so much that he went to CA to visit the vineyards. He said the wine was pretty good! That same friend bought 30 + houses right before the great run-up of 2005. I guess he learned something!

Thanks Craig for the insight!

Extremely valuable information for any real estate investor who wants an inside look at how a pro plays the game.

Nobody... absolutely nobody knows more about real estate than Craig Hall. He's not only observed, but been an active participant in both the up and down cycles. He's learned the lessons with sweat equity.

-David Johnson, KRLD