I am taking my own advice as to real estate with my own money. Buying land right now seems a good thing to do. GM stock not so much. GM could disappear tomorrow. The land will still be there even if it reduces in value even further.
I am not advocating any type of loan or leverage to "get into real estate". I just think that if you're looking to park any large amount of money, you shouldn't ignore outright owned real estate (especially the income generating variety) as part of the diversification strategy just because of the recent panic surrounding this one area.
Around here "unsellable" real estate actually means "real estate that can't be sold for enough to pay off the mortgage debt from the previously inflated prices." I've made several rational offers that were turned down for this reason. I've even heard that term tossed around by the very agent that refused my offer. "We just can't seem to sell anything these days, no one is buying! This stuff is just unsellable."
The people who lose the most shirts buy at the top when everything seems roses and sell at the bottom because "its not a good time to be in the market right now".
So, kudos to you, I hope that works well for you! :)
As for parking a large amount of money safely, that's a tough job and nothing to advise other people on unless you are aware of the risks and the potential fall-out from giving such advice.
I didn't realize that there was a different connotation to 'unsellable', apologies for that. The properties I was referring to were bought with cash, no bank involved so I'm not worried in the least. One is being lived in by an elderly couple, as long as they're alive they'll have shelter, it's a huge improvement from where they came from and even if the market was good I wouldn't sell it just because of that.
The other is technically 'up for sale', but with the market being in the dumps it hardly matters, just pay the property tax and stay put. It was bought to be lived in, not as a speculative object, and through circumstances I now find myself on the other end of the globe. Oh well :)
I agree with you that those who bought on speculation at the top of the market are the ones that will be hit hardest, in stock market terms, they're the sheep or the pigs (the joke goes something like this: There are three kinds of people active in the stockmarket, bears, they hope things will get worse, bulls, who hope things get better and pigs, they get slaughtered).
If you have a long term strategy and you have money that is completely unencumbered then it is possible to buy in a falling market, as you already mentioned there is intrinsic value in land. Even so, investing right now is basically saying that you know better than everybody else, and while I applaud you for doing it yourself I don't think you should tell people to follow you down that road unless you have a fairly solid guarantee that it will work out for them.
The OP will be in the possession of anywhere from 1M to 1.3M after taxes, if he just pays off his mortgage or buys a house to live in and very carefully salts away the rest he/she will be able to spend a small fraction of that when the market hits bottom, and then it will still be multiple years before it will pay out, if nothing unforeseen happens in the meantime.
I am not advocating any type of loan or leverage to "get into real estate". I just think that if you're looking to park any large amount of money, you shouldn't ignore outright owned real estate (especially the income generating variety) as part of the diversification strategy just because of the recent panic surrounding this one area.
Around here "unsellable" real estate actually means "real estate that can't be sold for enough to pay off the mortgage debt from the previously inflated prices." I've made several rational offers that were turned down for this reason. I've even heard that term tossed around by the very agent that refused my offer. "We just can't seem to sell anything these days, no one is buying! This stuff is just unsellable."
The people who lose the most shirts buy at the top when everything seems roses and sell at the bottom because "its not a good time to be in the market right now".