Lic. Real Estate and Mortgage Broker
Jeff Jafari
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Real estate is often termed as the safest investment avenue. In fact, in the present market, select property portfolio and investments done with proper evaluation (determining its true value), can lead to good profits. This is one reason why some people pursue this line of investment as their full time job. Generally, the talks of real estate are focused towards residential properties; commercial real estate seems to take a back seat. However, commercial real estate too is a good venture for investing with short and long term profit potentials..
Commercial real estate includes a lot of different types of properties. Most people relate commercial real estate with only office complexes or retail and industrial units. However, the commercial real estate is not limited to the few. There is more avenues to commercial real estate. Health care centers, retail structures and warehouse are all good examples of commercial real estate. Tourism and hospitality industry, hotel, motel and team parks, mobile home parks, with reliable professional management in place, Golf courses and luxury real estate, even residential properties like apartments (or any property that consists of more than four residential units) are considered commercial real estate. In fact, such commercial real estate is much in demand.
So, is commercial real estate really profitable? Well, if it were not profitable I would not have been selecting as my primary career, and helped many investors during the past quarter of a century. So, commercial real estate is profitable for sure. The only thing with commercial real estate is that recognizing the opportunity is a bit difficult as compared to residential real estate. But commercial real estate profits can be real big (in fact, much bigger than you would expect from residential real estate of the same proportion). You could take up commercial real estate for either reselling after appreciation or for renting out to, say, retailers. The commercial real estate development is in fact treated as the first sign for growth of residential real estate. Once you know of the possibility of significant commercial growth in the region (either due to tax breaks or whatever), you should start evaluating the potential for appreciation in the prices of commercial real estate and then go for it quickly (as soon as you find a good deal). And you must really work towards getting a good deal. If you find that commercial real estate, e.g. land, is available in big chunks which are too expensive for you to buy, you could look at forming a small investor group (with your friends) and buy it together (and split the profits later). In some cases e.g. when a retail boom is expected in a region, you might find it profitable to buy a property that you can convert into a warehouse for the purpose of renting to small businesses.
So commercial real estate presents a whole plethora of investing opportunities, you just need to grab it. Now is a perfect timing to take advantage of the soft market and profit from the Buyers’ Market, as the real estate market has bottomed out and it's fruition is in not so a distant future.
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