True...it is a great time to buy property...but what are your real objectives?

I keep hearing Realtors® say it is a buyers market and it is a great time to buy. But I am just wondering what the consumer is thinking. Are they buying because they intend on living in the property for at least a few years to build a family and some roots? Or are they "speculating" for the the market to go up in a short period of time just with the intentions of "flipping" the property and making a quick profit? Are you sure you are making the right decision? What is your true objective?
Helping my clients buy and sell Real Estate in South Florida are my specialties.I have bought and sold a few of my own properties as well and made money on all of them. But that didn't mean that I didn't do my homework first. I decided that since I didn't have a lot of money that I would probably be better off buying less expensive properties than high end. My reasons were simple...I didn't want the huge liability and what about if the property did not sell. I did not want all that debt. So diversified my holdings and I partnered up on a few. Well our plan worked...we only had 2 small mortgages on a few and the rest were purchased with cash. Our carrying costs were way below what we could command in the market and we did well. And we did this without even renting them out. We sold them quick and and we sold them at an attractive price to the buyers without being pigs. You see...we did all of this at the beginning of the boom and up until the demise we are in now.
We basically sold off most of them. At the end of the year I looked at some people I knew who went way overboard and purchased very expensive properties and used hard money and by the time these properties were finished and they tried to sell...they ended up with large payments each month and some are now in trouble. They were looking for the one big pay day and they could have done it the way we did where we still ended up doing well but on various projects.
When I moved my family to Pembroke Pines Florida back in 1999 our intentions were to buy a new home and live in it. For how long...I couldn't tell you. It was not our intentions to buy for the sole purpose of figuring we could sell it and make a profit or buying it as an investment. We purchased it because we wanted to put some roots down have our family grow and enjoy the time we had in the property. We made some friends and we had good times. In 2004 we started to talk about selling and buying a bigger home. We notice most of the neighbors had already moved and we were both doing well financially so we decided to sell right before the crash. We were lucky enough to sell in about 30 days and we had already close on the new house. We ended up moving to Weston Florida and we love our new home.
Even though we purchased the first home with the intentions of just living there we ended up making a good profit on it but take into account that we lived there for 7 yrs before we sold. So it actually worked out for us on both ends.
Buying and selling Real Estate in South Florida is probably going to be one of the biggest financial decisions you will ever make in your life so do your home work and think carefully as to what your Real intentions are.
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