Real Estate Investments in Maryland (MD)

Welcome to the wonderful world of investment real estate. It's been said that real estate ownership has made more people wealthy than any other type of investment. I have no reason to doubt this statement as both my research and personal experience show the truth of that proposition.

Unlike many other investments, real estate has an intrinsic value based upon human need. Everyone must reside on some piece of real estate and every business must have a location. While a company can go bankrupt and have its stock become worthless, real estate’s value, while it can fluctuate, will never become worth nothing.

Another common statement about real estate is “location, location, location”. This can easily be seen as anyone familiar with Montgomery County knows a house in Chevy Chase is worth far more than the same house in Germantown. In fact if you start in Chevy Chase and go north on Route 355, real estate prices drop a little every mile you go.

This doesn’t mean houses in the lower part of the county are better homes or better investments than the ones farther out. It's just that as you get further from the high-paying jobs in any area, both the supply of homes and travel time increases which affects values. We are quite lucky to be in one of the best places in the world to own real estate. Our biggest employer (the federal government) is never going out of business or moving to another city. By world standards of other capital cities like London or Tokyo, the Washington, D.C. area is relatively small in size with inexpensive real estate. In other words there is lots of room for growth and for price rise as the area population increases.

Real Estate - An "Ideal" Investment

Real estate has also been described as the “ideal” investment because you get all possible investment benefits. Real estate gives income (from rents), appreciation (increase in value), leverage (you can borrow money against it), and tax benefits (depreciation and capital gains treatment). No other type of investment has all these benefits.

The main disadvantage of real estate is management problems. That’s where we can help. If you invest in stocks or CDs you will never get a call from your bank or stockbroker that the plumbing is leaking. Nor will you need to decide whether to accept a certain prospective tenant or wait for one with better qualifications.

Real estate management takes time, effort, good judgment, knowledge, and experience to achieve best results. When problems arise it is also best to be on the scene (or have an expert available) to personally supervise the solution.

By employing an expert property management firm like ours you eliminate the only downside to owning a real estate investment.