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In the time of COVID 19, this is the safest and best time to buy property. I say that not as a broker, because not everyone should be buying property at all times. I say it as a long-time real estate investor.

Property investors like me have literally been waiting 10 years for this moment, one that we almost thought the Federal Reserve can financially engineer away.

So, while the more impatient property investors had jumped in during the past few years and held their noses at the crazy prices, others have been quietly waiting, even while the more aggressive investors boasted about millions in profits.

But now, with a recession on the way and a possible depression coming, this is the time to start looking and buying up prime properties that will be booming on the other end of COVID 19.

This is very exciting times for property investors. For home buyers, opportunities abound as well, since mortgage rates are about to slip into insane historical lows. For both, you might never be able to buy homes and property for both a low price and almost no cost financing.

As always, choose your purchases wisely.

I think initially vacation rentals in the first 4-5 weeks of the Coronavirus pandemic were a complete disaster with bookings falling off the face of the earth and cancellations shooting through the roof.  I personally thought the rebound would be delayed until later in the summer, but people are sick and tired of being stuck at home. They want out and go to the beach, the mountains, the lake, anywhere to escape! Now that working from home is changing the way our society works I feel vacation rental bookings will stay strong, duration of stay will be increased and areas where someone can safely socially distance and have access to internet are going to be booked like never before. During the middle of May there was this enormous rebound that occurred with bookings shooting to unexpected new heights. Airbnb has seen record breaking bookings recently. The company I work for, Evolve, has seen record breaking booking days. Things went from looking extremely pessimistic to very optimistic almost overnight. I'll attach some helpful articles for additional thoughts on this subject:

https://evolvevacationrental.com/blog/evolve/covid-19-and-short-term-rental-may-2020

https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesrealestatecouncil/2020/06/09/hope-is-on-the-horizon-how-the-short-term-rental-industry-will-recover-from-the-pandemic/#6bea69966e5f

https://skift.com/2020/04/16/how-short-term-rentals-are-faring-better-online-than-hotels-during-crisis-new-skift-research/

https://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2020/06/08/airbnb-joins-vacation-rental-sites-seeing-surge-demand/Y7Qax3drupdebsrWzMn0HK/story.html

I'm very bullish on the short term rental market.

Airbnb was created during the last recession because people wanted to earn extra income.

Will vaction rentals and short term rentals survive? Of course, they always will, but like with all good things there are corrections.

Many markets have corrected in price. In Alexandria VA for example, our properties would be pulling in an ADR of 180 during March - September... right now they are $150. We use master lease model for most properties so our profit is a little above break even.

If we purchased, we would see a higher gain as our profit margin would be greater if the mortgage was lower than our rental payments.

These numbers look quite different in Pensacola where we are growing our management company to. 

In Pen, the ADR is $200 for the properties we're looking at, with the rental rates at around 2k. Lots of upside for us.

"Be greedy when others are fearful and fearful when others are greedy." —Warren Buffett

Matt Malouf

Author-Adventurepreneur