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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I do not know about the rest out there but I take all of my photos on every listing we have. You would think that any agent that is listing properties in this market would be running right to the office as soon as they can to import them so they didn't lose a days market time. I wondering if these types of agents want to sell the properties or just let them sit. Maybe the word "lazy" comes to mind? Well I have an even better story. I had this listing in Pembroke Pines about a year ago. The seller was in trouble. Same story...overpaid during the boom and now owes more than it can command in our market. He called me because his relative purchased the property from a seller who had me list it. I tried for 8 months to sell it. the only showings we had were my own cultivated leads. I did three open houses and I spent money marketing the property and I took pictures. Well after all that... we could not sell it ...he called me to say he needed to take it off the market. It was a tough sale anyway and the home was bare and was in poor condition.I do take pride in the photos I take even though I left the toilet seat up in one of my recent posted listings. "ok...no one is perfect!"
I told him I would be willing to try to sell it again but he needed to price it much lower. I never heard back from him. But recently I noticed he re-listed the property with another Realtor(R).
I had no problem with that because it was a property that in my opinion was not saleable the way it was. The new Realtor(R) listed it way too high"that's her problem now" ...but as I was looking over the listing I noticed that she decided without my authorization to use all of my photos. I thought I was losing my mind but I even matched them against my old listing and they were exact.
The funniest thing was the agent was not only lazy for not taking their own photos...but was simply stupid enough to include my sign in the yard from the front exterior shot. I decided I would just play it cool and email the agent that she had absolutely no authority to use photos I spent time taking and that she needed to remove them immediately. You are talking about an agent who has been around and works for a big company. Well..it has been a week since my email and no response form the agent. I went back into the MLS today to see if she complied and believe it or not ...she did. She probably was too embarrassed to respond back. This happened to me a few years ago when an agent stole my remarks word for word and the photo he used had my car on the driveway...you could almost read my license plates. What is the the deal with that?

The point I want to make is why an agent has to not only be lazy but has to steal another agents photos? To me it is the most unprofessional thing I have ever seen in this business. Why should I let another agent ride my coat tails? If you are going to interview a Realtor(R) to market your property then you should make sure you ask them about what type of photo layout they will provide when they market it.