Bruce Norris is an active investor, hard
money lender, and real estate educator with over 30 years experience.
Bruce has been involved in over 2,000 real estate transactions as a
buyer, seller, builder, and money partner.
Renowned for his ability to forecast long-term real estate market trends and timing, the release of The California Comeback report
in 1997 gained him much notoriety and its accuracy of the extensive
report led many California investors to financial freedom. His January
2006 release, The California Crash, was an in-depth look into
the California market correction and the statistics behind Bruce’s
predictions. His last award-winning report from 2010, Tip of the Iceberg,
Bruce dissected government intervention and how it would effect real
estate professionals, the potential dangers of market manipulation,
investment strategies by market price range, and micro insights into
some of California’s most important markets.
I never thought I’d ever contemplate not being a real estate
investor. I’ve become financially well off because of real estate (at
least, real estate as I know it).
I began to look at the scope of changes I see coming. Not what may
happen, but what must happen! Will the changes be so enormous that they
convert what was a very profitable business into one that’s much less
profitable?
I found myself playing the part of devil’s advocate as I did research for this new report, All In or Fold.
If you’re assuming that because real estate prices are half-off and
interest rates are rock bottom, that this must be the all-time best
investment opportunity of our lifetime to “go all in”, I encourage you
to take a second look.
I do real estate market timing reports for two reasons. The first is
to determine a strategy for my personal money and the businesses I own.
The second is to share those findings with you in the most honest
fashion possible. What I’m telling you is I was willing to write a
report that said “fold” when it came to the future of real estate as an
investment. The research that I’ve done has been an honest attempt to
attack real estate and see if it would survive.
Why did real estate go up in the first place? It didn’t really go up
prior to the 70s. Why? Why did California go up after 1973 at twice the
pace of the rest of the country? That had never happened before. Were we
just lucky that we were born in an era that found the baby boom
generation maturing? As this huge generation got older, they earned more
and demanded bigger houses. When one income wasn’t enough, no problem:
enter the dominance of the two-worker family. When we needed more
buyers, no problem: enter the foreign buyer, the emergence of the
minority family buyer, and lots of migration. Whenever we reached a
price point that made it difficult to qualify, no problem: we simply
adjusted the loan programs to allow more and more people to buy.
I began to wonder if real estate went up due to a series of what I’ll
call First Time Events. I found several dozen of these first time
events, but they are over. They were possibly the drivers of past real
estate cycles, but what will fuel future price growth if these first
time events aren’t replaced?
- Which direction do you see these categories going in the next decade?
- Higher taxes on wages or lower taxes?
- Lower interest rates or higher interest rates?
- Less regulation or more regulation?
- Inflation going higher or lower?
- Interest rate deductions becoming more generous or taken away?
- Increased government spending or austerity?
- Capital gains tax going lower or higher?
- Loan programs more restrictive or generous?
- Immigration rules more lax or strict?
- Demographics having a positive or negative affect?
If you intend to be a real estate investor in 2012 and beyond, you
had better not assume this will be business as usual. Looking forward to
seeing you at All In Or Fold. - Bruce Norris
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