Making Money In Global Real Estate

Published Date : March 11, 2010

The current state of the global economy may seem gloomy to most of us, but there are still many opportunities to make money in every industry, including in real state. As some would say, there are always going to be successful and unsuccessful business ventures. This is true wherever there is a marketplace, as it is a necessary fact of a healthy market. But there are ways of maximizing your chances of being successful, and paying close attention to these key points of interest is even more necessary when the economy is in a slump. And this fact applies to real estate as much as any industry.

Part of the problem facing real estate developers in the current state of the economy is the increased difficulty in getting consumers to spend their hard earn money – not just on you, but at all. In order to be successful, in order to out-compete the competition and secure more profit, real estate developers are going to have to become just as innovative in the marketing of their products, but also in developing them. Those who manage to become more innovative will find success; those who do not, will not.

There are several specific areas that real estate developers can focus in on in order to get ahead of the competition. The first area is information. Real estate developers that are going to be successful around the globe are going to have to become more informed and demand more information throughout the industry. As a directly related point to that, successful developers will want more information, and more transparency in the industry – and not just for themselves, but also for their clients. Another related area to information is vague promises and hyperbolic information on developer websites and in brochures. An increased skepticism must come with a deeper focus on information, and this will be a good thing as fewer empty promises will result in better professional relationships.

The next area that future successful real estate developers will want to improve on is understanding the health of the overall financial systems before entering the market in the first place. This means exploring financial data and trends, and analyzing the stability and appropriateness of regulation within the financial system. The current economic crisis reaffirmed something that many businessmen and women have forgotten: without a healthy financial system supporting the economy, no industry is going to be safe from a bust. Therefore any successful real estate developer is going to need to keep an eye out on the health of the financial system.

Another area where developers will want to focus in on is specific pricing trends in real estate throughout the recent bubble and burst. The successful developer will not just want to seek a substantial discount over 2007 pricing highs, but will also want to pass on that discount onto potential buyers. This increases the buying rate of properties, and will most certainly help in the recovery. The new global real estate developer will also want to negotiate on prices that seem still too artificially high, especially when it comes to high-end, high-risk properties. And as a related note, any developer that wants to be successful will increase his or her chances by avoiding areas that run the risk of either an oversupply of real estate or copycat developments. This has a direct effect on pricing instability and unfairness at a very local level.

There is one last key area where developers will want to focus a lot of attention on as global real estate recovers from the current crisis, and that is real estate associated with larger global concerns. The most prominent of the larger global concerns right now is probably environmental in nature. Therefore the more successful developers will want to focus on developing and marketing real estate that offers a more environmentally sound or sustainable approach to living. And as an added bonus, environmentally friendly businesses are likely to receive added regulatory support or even subsidy from government agencies around the world.

There is a lot of information to be understood in these areas by real estate developers, no doubt about that. But the changing landscape of both our financial and regulatory sectors as well as the real estate industry as a whole will effectively demand that real estate developers be very cognizant of these areas. It is therefore a good idea for developers to start working on exploring and understanding these areas, as well as making what they learn a vital part of their development and marketing plans. Remember, in the end, a global real estate recovery is a necessary aspect in the broader global economic recovery. Anything that helps global real estate helps the global economy. And vice versa.

To streamline and minimize blog maintenance, I will be discontinuing maintaining the realestateexpedition.com website (however, I will still hold the domain). I will gradually move all articles from this site to A Dawn Journal. This article originally published on the above website on Mar 11, 2010.

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