It's Getting Hard To Buy a House: Should You Invest in Vacant Land Instead?
Ever since the pandemic began, it's become harder for people to buy real estate, mainly because of high home prices and competition due to low supply. With inflation rearing its ugly head, it becomes more important than ever to own real property, which tends to hold its value. No one can print more land; there's a limited supply.
Here's an interesting aside: The other day, Realtors at my brokerage were discussing their experiences with Opendoor. This iBuyer has been offering and oftentimes paying more than list price for homes, including "as-is" homes. If you remember, Zillow tried this tactic too and failed. But Opendoor is doing well, buying houses like nobody's business, and had positive net income in the third quarter of 2021 while doing so.
Opendoor makes money by flipping homes. It also sells to institutional investors who then rent out the homes. Institutional investors, particularly in certain markets, such as Atlanta, have been buying an increasingly larger amount of houses for sale. In McDonough (an Atlanta suburb), for example, iBuyers flipped an incredible 70% of their housing stock to institutional investors, many times without even listing the homes for sale. We mom-and-pops can't compete with that.
Source Fool.com
