Say you needed to invest $1,000,000 within 1 year

That would really depend entirely on the purpose of the fund...

to make money through appreciation and or income over a 2-5 year period (no super long term plays)

I think the problem here is the whole notion of "buying on behalf of a fund".

I'd act independently and buy LAND.

NYCMatt: where would you buy land?

If i had that kind of money to invest, the last place i'd put it in would be Real estate.

Why would real estate be the "last" place you'd put it? It's the one commodity that never changes: as more and more people inhabit the Earth, the SIZE of the Earth remains constant, and therefore land will always appreciate in value.

Buy distressed condos in Florida/Arizona/California?
Buy a note on a failed condo conversion in Brooklyn?
Buy condo apartments in Manhattan?
Buy land?
Buy a homesite and build?
Offer Mortgage Money?

Tomorrow? Absolutely none of the above (except possibly buy land). Check back in a few months...

lr10021, I'd buy land in Pittsburgh.

Real estate is not really the equity class for a 2-5 year investment timeline.

I would trust that Steven Roth knows what he is doing and buy VNO at a 5 year low. You get a nice yield, and it's completely liquid. I agree that commercial real estate is going to take a dump the next couple of years, but if it drops reinvest the dividend and buy lower. Why buy the illiquid property when you can buy the reit? Just look at the many threads on this board who are trying to weasel their way out of a contracts on new construction. Don't you think they would have just went to etrade and hit the SELL button?

The last line should say " Don't you think they wish they could have gone to etrade and hit the SELL button?"

NYCMatt, you're too funny! You sound like one of these brokers during the boom, swearing to you that RE is only appreciating in value, blah, blah, blah... Your speech sounds obsolete!

If you can invest using 401(k)s or IRAs consider buying global REITs. A combination of RWR and RWX should do.

Commercial real estate has had a washout. Dividends have been cut about as far as they will be cut and the yields are still attractive.

very interesting ideas..
anyone buying distressed condos out there?

No - they are distressed for a reason.

I think Los Angeles proper has hit bottom or is near it, but as others have said that would be a longer-term investment than one year. But of those ideas distressed California condos but ONLY in LA, SD, the denser parts of OC or from SF to SJ.

So in other words NOT in riverside. But West Hollywood or San Mateo? Sure.

Sledgehammer, ALL real estate is still more valuable than it was 20 years ago, thus proving my point.

"I think Los Angeles proper has hit bottom or is near it,"

Not true. Considering that 60% of all Option ARMs are in CA, I still see more room for significant price declines out there.

"ALL real estate is still more valuable than it was 20 years ago, thus proving my point."

NYCMatt, meet history: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/05/magazine/305tulips_shorto.1.html?_r=2&scp=1&sq=very%20very%20old%20house%20shorto&st=cse

jason10006, curious why not riverside in your opinion but the others will recover.

Malthus, meet America!

This isn't Herengracht -- the author admitted as much.

Look at property values nation-wide from two decades ago, compared to now. Then get back to me.

PS ... By "nation-wide", I mean THIS nation -- in case you were confused.

NYCMatt,

Look at the price of a stamp from 20 years ago, and then get back to me, fool.

We're not talking about stamps, fool.

Oh Sorry. So when you said "all" you didn't really mean "all"? You just meant in the US over the course of a large property bubble? Thanks for clarifying champ.

"jason10006, curious why not riverside in your opinion but the others will recover."

Because its endless sprawl near nothing. You cannot build more in West LA proper, WeHo, Beverly Hills, Santa Monica etc. Riverside is an hour or more from anywhere anyone wants to be. Its very simple.

_____________________________________

"Not true. Considering that 60% of all Option ARMs are in CA, I still see more room for significant price declines out there. "

Many of those have already re-set and often at lower rates. Many more were already foreclosed upon. The Southland fundemntal ratios - price/affordabilty, price/rent, etc, are near 40- year lows.

I still read the LA Times, you know. Old habits.

You don't get it, NYCMatt. It's just inflation. Having to explain this to you tells me I'm dealing with a RE Broker.

Amateur.

No, YOU don't get it positive.

Real estate will always go up in value, bubbles or no bubbles.

It's the way the world works.

Matt, does bread always go up in value?

invest in me... I've had great success in taking $10MM and turning it into $1MM....

Bread and real estate are not the same at all. Even suggesting they are indicates to me a fundamental inability to grasp the concept at hand.

"It's the way the world works". You sound worse and worse every post.

How old are you NYCMatt? 21?

hmmmmm the laws of supply and demand.... nope doesn't affect RE... everything else... hookers, guns, nuclear bombs, Bankers, fish, oil, etc etc etc..... that's right RE cannot be increased.... how do you explain teh land being formed off the Big Island... nope land isn't created... it's given by GOD to a select few to hold on forever... then what happened to Pangea?

This I why I have to differentiate myself from the other Mat(t)'s

Matt, throughout history there've been massive human die-offs -- radically decreasing population.

Furthermore, they ARE making more land: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/18/science/earth/18juneau.html?scp=1&sq=alaska%20land%20golf&st=cse

So it follows logically that the value of land will always decrease over time.

matwith1 lmao!

matwith1t, i share an abreviation with the other AR. was painful for awhile.

"Bread and real estate are not the same at all"
it is for this kind of insight that people come to visit this message board. thanks matt for making it so clear for me.

It's still not clear to me. I guess I'm not as smart as the rest of you. So Matt, please, for my sake -- compare and contrast: bread and real estate. Begin.

Coop interviews are MUCH more stringent for the resale of bread, Alan.

You gotta give it to him, bread does taste better.

Back to the question, I would love to hear what do you think it will be a good investment to put 1mil. in cash these days. If you already have a place to live, and you don't want to hold more stocks, would you invest in RE?

sorry mimi...

you can cut bread into fun shapes that my son will eat (i.e. dinosaurs) can't do that w/ RE...

Well w67, since I am thinking of a multifamily, technically, I can cut it into pieces (and then rent the one with the shape that your son likes the most when he is at grad school at Columbia...)

mimi - A large chunk of my money is in simple index funds that I don't move around, but the money I DO reallocate on a more regular basis is in corporate bonds and municipal bonds.

I've personally never liked real estate as an investment class - broker fees, insurance, real estate taxes, and maintenance fees make it very hard to stay ahead of inflation as far as total return on investment goes.

If I had the money and the patience, I might buy a 6-8 unit building and rent it, but I don't think most people have the time or know-how to play landlord on top of their full-time jobs.

Mimi, there is no way you'll get a better yield from a multifamily than buying VNO. If the boiler breaks at Time Warner, you don't have to fix it. If it does on your multifamily, good luck.

"hmmmmm the laws of supply and demand"

Those laws affect real estate and bread very differently.

Real estate can't be *produced* the way bread can. You can't make any more "land" than there already is. You can, however, figure out ways to increase the yield of wheat crops ... use technology to grow wheat on unarable land ... and thereby increase bread production to the point of a surplus.

mimi, I'd pay w67th to be his kid. Today you could get bread in the shape of dinosaurs. In a few years when you turn 15 you'll get a diaper with a snicker's bar in it. Then you could show it to alpine and pretend you found it in Stuyvesant Town.

Hmmm, I think the folks in Gay Indiana, East St. Louis, Detroit, and the Imperial Valley of California would strongly disagree that real estate ALWAYS goes up in value.

Gay, Indiana? ROFL! Is that near Intercourse, Pennsylvania?

Good argument. Everyone knows that you cannot build on unarable land, but only grow technologically advanced wheat on it.

Gary Indiana?

W67th, I meant rent OUT the one with the shape...damn, always falling in the same english pitfalls...

I have bought and sold in the past, and actually cover a lot of my expenses with rental properties I have. Where I live overseas, the rental gives me 11% return a year, so I am quite happy we actually invested here. I used to rent out a house in CT , which also was yielding a good return (10%) at the time, before i sold it. On the other hand I know that the paradigm is shifting and it seems like people that were living on investments like RE will have to work and produce. It sounds fair.

I know that historically stocks grow more, and that a remote-controlled boiler and frozen tenants can be a MAJOR pain in the neck (it already happened to me-the tenant talking about toxic fumes-most unsettling feeling). But when you are not a business person, you've lost a lot of money in the stock market, and love to have a piede a terre in NY, RE starts to look better.

Thanks for the advice!

Take your 1M and go buy 10,000 acres of prime Moon Land in the Sea of Tranquility and a certificate that means nothing. Moon land equity has remained constant, it must be a good buy!

matt---you know that i think you are a know nothing, know it all, biased moron. however, with your latest rantings here, i would have to agree that you have reached new lows. be sure to put all your money (of which i am sure you must have plenty from your various expert activities) into the most illiquid investment you can find.

Become a hard money lender to people who put down large downpayments on Condos and have to close or they will lose lots of money (at 13% plus 3 points) but lost their loan commitments due to changing loan requirements and need to close immediately and don't have time to get any sort of conventional financing (but where there is still some equity given the amount you are lending)

especially if they have other assets to pledge.

that is an excellent idea but how would you go about putting the word out without spending too much? also, it would be all about proper due diligence. intriguing.

buy land for wind farms, in the plains states.

Then lease it at low prices to start-up wind-energy cos. Over time, as they do well, raise the rents. You'll make a fortune and will also be able to look your grandkids in the eye.

GG, that's the smartest idea i've read in a while!

Two very interesting ideas, indeed. Care to elaborate more on these? 30yrs, I don't know the conduit for lending in cases like this. Would I'll be issuing a mortgage? Are there intermediaries? What's the risk?
I know really little about wind farms. I'll check it out.

Hard money lenders have been around like... forever. The good one's have never spent a nickel on advertising (plus, with the minuscule amount of money we're talking about - $1,000,000, you'd probably only be doing 1 deal at a time). All I would do is call up all the RE attorneys I know and let them know what I was doing and they would put their clients who were begging them to help them find a way out of their predicaments in touch with me. i would bet I'd have 10 times the amount of requests for business as I could possibly handle. Of course I'd issue a mortgage, just like anyone else would; it IS a mortgage. What's the risk? the market falls to even a lower level than the amount I've lent them and I have to foreclose and eat the loss. but that's why hard money lenders make sure there's PLENTY of equity when they lend. Funny how we aren't hearing about any of THEM going out of business.........

Oh, and if anyone who has been claiming that they have that kind of money to invest has any interest in setting up a hard money fund with a buy in of $1,000,000 minimum, contact me off board and we've got a business to set up.

How do you private message on this website?

you can't. You or 30yrs will have to post your e-mail address on the forum.

don't forget that you can also invest the money in my Ponzi Scheme, I mean Hedge Fund.

Anyone looking to buy Real Estate in Florida, should not be planning on selling in 2 or 3 years. The intelligent and more educated investor in the Miami area right now are buying for long term.

Dave, some of the posters, like Burkhardt and 30yrs, have disclosed their identity. They are brokers, both very experienced and very far from the typical portray of the the pushy lier broker. Do you need to contact them? I might find in SE the threads with their info.

Thanks mimi. Just curious as to how something like that is put together.

dfrignani@gmail.com

Actually, I think multifamily units in the outer boroughs are some of the better investments at this point, if we're sticking with NYC. I'm talking small, 2-3 family row houses in queens, eg. I've done the math on some of those places, and it is not bad. You go larger than that, and the hassles/liabilities/taxes get in the way. I would absolutely stay away from new condos.

Also, dave7, it's too late now, but in general, you should break your email address up so that website scrapers/spammers can't parse it easily. Also never a bad idea to have a separate account just for stuff like this, just in case.

NYCMatt, Just getting back to you. Do you consider Southern California part of the US or are you going to come up with some new qualifier for you ridiculous argument?

http://www.streeteasy.com/nyc/talk/discussion/11960-median-home-prices-drop-below-1989-levels-in-some-parts-of-southland

Thanks Jason.

malthus,

How much was property in Southern California worth 30 years ago versus today?

why stop at 30 years when you can go back 50?

Keep moving those goalposts, buddy.

Fine. Let's say 20 years. Has it gone up in 20 years? Please answer the question if you can.

read the article. the answer for certain communities is know. without considering inflation, even.

the answer is no, not know. the snotty tone threw my concentration. please read the article if you can.

"read the article. the answer for certain communities is know. "

This sentence makes no sense.

¿Habla Inglés?

just keep watching tv, matt...don't bother with any written material.

You can find extreme examples in any neighborhood in the United States. I was speaking for the aggregate.

as noted above, just keep making it up as you go. back pedal, swerve, keep it moving. truth is only an illusion, right?

i guess you missed my explanation, i accidentally typed know instead of no, i guess it would be difficult for you to intuit that. why bother when a gratuitous insult is so much more satisfying?

"has it gone up in 20 years? please answer the question if you can." you didn't like the answer so you changed the terms of your question? you have awesome analytical abilities.

Well, I do admit it can be challenging to decipher the manifold spelling and grammatical errors on this board ...

It made sense to me. You must have been too busy "speaking for the aggregate." How are the aggregate these days? I'm sure they appreciate your support.

Among all of the choices, best to find out which can be liquidated or closed out most quickly and with the lowest transaction costs. So I'll have to go with offering mortgage money.