opportunities, or leverage, for liquidity now?

[rj.phila]

hi all, im wondering if you guys have any thoughts on where you might be seeing any opportunities right now for folks w/ some liquidity (with an eye towards long term and somewhat reliable yield). sniffing around, there seems to be alot of real estate investment folks who see the next year as a goldmine for anyone with liquidity, primarily in the 6 figures and up range. i've crunched the numbers of a few local investment properties locally, and the returns are very appealing: ~15-30%, depending on sale price. if home prices drop another 10% this year as some are predicting, this could be a really great opportunity for cash-heavy folks. are there any other areas that you guys are seeing some great opportunities right now? thanks, rj

[littleroc02us]

If I had the liquidity right now I'd be buying up bank owned forclosures left and right. I live in a suburb of Minneapolis. Best time ever to buy with cash.

[bjl584]

I looked into rental properties recently. Particularily, bank owned ones. What I found was that financing options on these properties have changed drastically in the last few years. Also, banks still aren't (at least where I live) willing to negotiate price more than a few thousand dollars.

[Slug]

If my bonus comes through, I'm definitely looking for my first investment property.

[yulianisakov]

consider TICs or MLPs

I would consider securitized real estate such as tenant-in-commons (TICs) or master-limited partnerships (MLPs), which are tax-savvy vechiles to hold energy related assets (as you know commodity prices are soaring so these aren't doing too bad either). Right now both are providing tremendous opportunities as far as growth and dividends, especially the TICs. They automatically provide investors with a 7% return on your investment the second the money purchases into a property and aftewards can provide long-term stability of about 8% annual yield with a step-up every year (which is good for someone who has a long-term time horizon of at least 7 years). At the same time, these TICs can provide about about 20-30% appreciation at the back end once the property is sold which can effectively raise the annual yield to way above its base rate to 12-15%. MLPs have good growth and yields right now as well such as Inergy and Enterprise Product Partner. Not so bad for somewhat conservative investments.