The Missing Keys to Thriving in Any Real Estate Market
By: Eddie Godshalk, MBA
Published: June 15, 2009
Format: Paperback, 180 pages
ISBN-10: 1890427136
ISBN-13: 978-1890427139
Publisher: Home Value Predictor
"Just like the stock market or any other financial concept, the real estate market is predictable - when you have access to the most accurate, reliable, and relevant information available", writes real estate coach and investor Eddie Godshalk, in his practical and revolutionary book The Missing Keys to Thriving in Any Real Estate Market. The author demonstrates how his system of highly targeted mapping of real estate values better predicts value than relying simply on location, terms, and price.
Eddie Godshalk considers a lack of reliable information on local markets and trends to be a major cause of real estate investment failure. The author points out that the mania of the recently burst housing bubble was fueled by imperfect media reports of constantly rising housing prices. Talking heads would repeat the mantra that housing values, despite ample evidence to the contrary, would always rise in price indefinitely. Because prices in the recent past had risen in general terms, people's levels of risk aversion fell, creating a huge bubble that inevitably reached a bad ending for many investors. Small price decreases, for heavily leveraged and over extended home buyers, resulted in huge financial losses and foreclosures.
Eddie Godshalk (photo left) recognizes that many home buyers relied, not only on their lenders, real estate agents, builders, and the media for information, but on numerous online and offline real estate price reporting services as well. For the author, most of these price reports were too general, and did not contain enough up to date data, for reaching rational decision making conclusions. To counter this often very misleading information, Eddie Godshalk offers an alternative. His computer based system uses much more highly targeted mapping of areas, and uses real time data to generate reports. For real estate agents and investors, the access to dynamic mapping of actual prices as they happen, risk is lowered considerably. Instead of relying on generalized, and often out of date information, mistakes regarding area and pricing can be reduced dramatically.
For me, the power of the book is the author's premise that relying on incomplete, and often very wrong local information, led to many of the abuses in the housing bubble. Eddie Godshalk points out, in detail, how flawed and misleading information was spread through the media, and accepted throughout the entire real estate and lending industries as fact. People became susceptible to glossy and oversimplified charts that fueled greed to make quick money, and fear of missing out on expected profits. In their place, the book describes the crucial importance of examining real time, dynamic information on a street by street basis. Better information helps the home buyer, investor, agents, and lenders to better assess risk and reward for a given locally mapped area. Within areas of collapsing prices, pockets of genuine real estate values can be uncovered, while leaving other areas alone entirely.
I highly recommend the useful and risk lessening book The Missing Keys to Thriving in Any Real Estate Market by Eddie Godshalk, to any real estate investor, home buyer, real estate agent, or lender seeking a more reliable source of local market information. Instead of relying on incomplete, and often dangerously outdated information sources, the author provides access to real time, dynamic pricing information. The calculation charts included in the book provide useful tools for examining local markets, complete with the crucial reminder that no investment is entirely without risk. That risk warning is an important part of the book
Read the real estate value seeking book The Missing Keys to Thriving in Any Real Estate Market by Eddie Godshalk, and discover how to better assess and lower risk in real estate investments. The book is essential reading for anyone serious about real estate markets, whether in sales or for investment purposes. Information is power, and this book demonstrates how to gain access to the latest real time pricing information, on the most local levels. The reader will never have to rely on the usual very general, and often very inaccurate information again.
