The Ten Commandments of Condo Buying: The Most Important Things You Should Know Before Buying. Dan S. Barnabic

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       To understand how important it is to buy at the right time, just think of condo units that, only a few years ago, sold at very high prices but lost their value – many of them as much as 50 percent or more – as a result of the American real estate collapse of 2006/07.

      For example, brand new units on Brickell Ave. in Miami, which were selling for up to $600,000 before the crash, took a dive in value almost overnight. Some ended up selling at the (relatively) meager price of $250,000, or even less. This same phenomenon occurred in Los Angeles, Denver, Phoenix, Las Vegas, and other urban areas.

      Something very similar happened, during the major market crash of 1989/90, to major American urban areas and booming Canadian cities such as Vancouver and Toronto.

      There’s no question about it: The condo market will be adversely affected again; the only question is when.

      At the height of the market, condo units were sold to people who had previously rented apartments. They bought their units with very small down payments. This led other such renters to enter the market. Soon, ownership of the condos was largely composed of previous renters with little or no cash reserves and unstable jobs.

      These buyers made their decision innocently, hoping to ride out the real estate bonanza until they could resell their unit at a profit.

      In fact, there’s always a limit to how high speculative trends can rise. Sure enough, eventually the bonanza ended. The market became saturated with condo units. Owners panicked as the value of units plummeted. As a recourse, they rented their unit out for whatever they could get or walked out.

      These unfortunate and former unit owners ended up with a ruined credit record as a result of unpaid bills and judgments due to foreclosures, making them much weaker financially than they were before they bought their condo.

      So the idea is to buy a condo unit at the right time. The problem is that no one can predict with any degree of certainty when the right time is. There are, however, some common-sense indicators that you can take into account.

      Don’t pay too much attention to real estate brokers’ forecasts – or, for that matter, to banks’ analyses of the markets – because these prophecies are mostly profit-driven. The real estate brokers’ and bank executives’ very livelihood depends on boosting consumer confidence. They shouldn’t be taken as impartial sources regarding markets.