Austin Area Home or Investment Property?

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In the Real Estate world we have been conditioned to think of Real Estate as an Investment. While this is partially true, it is also a major obstacle for buyers looking for a home that will make them happy. They find a home that they really like and then they begin to look at it as an investment.

Yes, your home should be a good investment. After all, the reasons why you are buying a particular home should be the reasons why some other families in the future are also interested in this home. Unless it is a really odd home--your connection with a home should be shared by some portion of the population in the future. The problem comes when a buyer looks at a potential home purchase equally as an investment and their future home. Finding the home that connects with the buyer and the buyer that connects with the home is a completely different formula than finding a proper investment property. Investments are investments. My home is my home.

I invest in Real Estate, and while I buy "nice homes" in good communities with good schools, amenities, etc., I am not looking for a home that works for me and my family. It is not my goal. I am looking for an investment with short term or long term returns. On the other hand, when I buy a home to live in, I am looking FIRST and FOREMOST for a home with which I make an emotional connection. Yes, it will be a good investment, because we will buy in a good area with good schools where others will want to live in the future, but we will not find this home at 10% below market value. I am willing to pay market value for the home where we are going to live every time--because I want this house, in this community, on this street. Make a bargain? Probably not. Get a great house and good future investment? Always.

It may not make business sense, but personal real estate ("my home") has a layer that is intangible and unrelated to business school fundamentals. You can't touch it or measure it if you don't do what I do 70 hours a week, but it is absolutely there and it is how we buy personal real estate. Buying a personal home based on business fundamentals is as flawed an approach as buying investment property based on how much you connect with the house. The two are unrelated. Buyers who can not separate these two ideas really struggle with the home buying process.

When you are ready to buy or sell your next Austin area home or investment, give me a call. Let's talk. Tim Thornton, Realtor ®, Austin, Texas.