I came across a very interesting Reuters story this month.
In 2009, the Association of Foreign Investors in Real Estate (AFIRE), a group of savvy real estate investors, plan to increase lending in U.S. real estate by 58%.
More amazing is that they plan on increasing equity investments in U.S. real estate by a whopping 73%!! That’s a huge number.
And are you ready for this? The premier market the group is targeting is … Washington D.C.
Washington D.C. is the BEST market in the world, according to this group.
This is consistent with what I see and experience in the Washington D.C. real estate market.
We have gotten a flood of new home starts in the last few weeks. I think the low rates don’t hurt (So please let me know if you are interested in selling your property).
Two other pieces that in my opinion have had an impact in the last month or so, atleast locally.
First, it sure seems (I’ve not done any analysis, just intuition, and anecdotal evidence from the flood of phone calls we have gotten) that the low rates have made starter home mortgage payments closer to the price of rental homes. And secondly, Montgomery County Maryland has alot of proposed legislation (as usual) that is making home building more restrictive and more costly to obtain permitting. There is a sping deadline for a vote on some of these laws. Give me a call or send an email if you want Park and Planning text of the proposals.
Sure seems to be pretty active new home real estate market from our client base.
Let me know what you think and see out there in the real estate world.