A short commentary arguing that while market cycles exist and can inform decisions, timing the real estate market is extremely difficult because real estate is highly local; local economic events (e.g., a new employer or a plant closure) can create pockets of rapidly rising or falling housing demand that national indicators miss.
You're going to hear people say, give you advice to time the market and to look at market cycles. And even in our book, we talk about market cycles, right? And that's a real thing. And you want to be able to look at the market cycles to see where you're at, to see if it's a good time to buy. That doesn't mean that you're able to time the market, because, number one, market is local. So you could be talking to somebody who's looking at the entire US and saying, here's where we're at based on the economy. That does not mean that this little pocket of Ohio has this massive, massive demand for housing because a new Amazon facility went in or for whatever reason, and those prices are skyrocketing where other places, maybe a job site went down. And so there's a lot of vacancies there. It's hard to rent a property like real estate is local. And if you don't understand that part, there is a big, gigantic piece missing for you, and you're going to likely end up losing money.
Physicians and High Earners — What Real Estate Can and Can't Do for Your Taxes
