What Christmas Wreaths and Distressed or Discounted Real Estate or REOs have in common
On my way back from Safeway this morning after buying about a week's worth of milk (in other words 6 gallons, hey I've got 4 kids and it's just past noon and half a gallon is gone already... but anyway), on my way back home I passed by Michaels and saw a bunch of Christmas wreaths selling for 90 cents each. These are normally about $5 to $10 wreaths at the peak of the Christmas season. If someone or even maybe a Christmas store (you know those that only open for a couple of months at the end of the year) bought these and held them till the end of the year, they could probably make a killing. They could probably have an ROI in the few hundreds.
Rather than stopping and buying 100 wreaths (since I know my wife would not be too happy seeing 100 wreaths in the garage), I got to thinking how much the wreaths were like discounted real estate/REO properties (or in general any discounted asset that is out of season). The subprime mess (among other things) in the United States has caused a glut of residential real estate to fall out of season.
As with wreaths, residential real estate will be back in season eventually. The time frame may not be the same since wreaths will most likely be back in season in the latter part of year and residential real estate may or may not recover some, but it will recover. It always does. It is, to use Warren Buffett's words, a "high-probability event" that residential real estate will be back to where it was 1.5 to 2 years ago. It may just take 1, 2, 3 or more (or less) years to get there.
So imagine the returns those that buy now at 40 to 70 cents on the dollar will see once the residential real estate market is back up again. It may not be in the hundreds as with wreaths, but in the 30s to 50s shouldn't be too bad.
Could this be of interest? If not, I can definitely find you some wreaths that available for pennies on the dollar. You can open up your own Christmas store and you'd make a killing!
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Tags: high-probabilityevent, distressed investment sourcing, distressed asset investing, bulk reo, loan portfolios, note portfolios, warren buffet, reo properties, reo portfolios, discounted property, mortgage trading, commercial portfolios, investment portfolios
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If you want to find out more about this blog post or what Esenai (my real estate and technology consulting company) can do for you, call me at 240-441-5086 or email me. (just remove the "-spamnot" from the email address.) Marvin a.k.a. eMarv
