How to Profit from the Coming Real Estate Bust Money-Making Strategies for the End of the Housing Bubble

by Rubino, John

• ISBN13: 9781579548704
• ISBN10: 1579548709
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2003-09-20
• Publisher: Rodale Books

Summary

The housing bubble is about to burst. Are you ready? While the rest of the economy teeters on the edge of recession, home sales are booming and home prices are surging. Can this continue? Not a chance. The housing market is hot because Americans-- apparently convinced that the good times will never end-- are borrowing record amounts of money to buy ever-larger homes. And we've learned to treat our existing homes like piggy banks, borrowing against our home equity to maintain our lifestyles. This boosts the economy but causes us to incur debts that will soon force us to stop spending. The result will be a deep recession, complete with declining home prices and a collapse in the value of housing-related stocks. And that's the optimistic scenario! With mortgage, corporate, and government debt soaring, the bursting of the housing bubble might set off a chain reaction that wreaks 1930s-style havoc on stocks, the dollar, and real estate. In clear, easy-to-understand terms, this book shows how real estate has become the latest in a long line of financial bubbles, how the bubble is likely to burst, and how you can both protect yourselfandmake money as the drama unfolds. You'll also learn: * Why all "cash" is not equally safe * Why gold will soar as the dollar falls * Which stocks will be casualties of the housing bust, and how to profit from their collapse * How to ensure against-- and even profit from-- a decline in the value of your home Whether you're worried about the value of your home, your stock portfolio, or your bank account, you'll find answers here. You can't stop what's coming, but you can turn it to your advantage.

Author Biography

John Rubino spent the 1980s as a Wall Street financial analyst and since 1990 has been a regular contributor to TheStreet.com, Individual Investor, Kiplinger's Personal Finance, Ziff Davis Smart Business, Consumer's Digest,On Investing, and many others. His first book, Main Street, Not Wall Street, was published by William Morrow in 1998. He is currently at work on a book about gold.

Table of Contents

"The trends that produced the housing boom-- falling interest rates, soaring mortgage debt, and plunging levels of home equity-- have nearly run their course. This virtually guarantees a real estate showdown and makes a crash-- complete with plummeting home prices and mass foreclosures-- quite possible. And because housing is the only thing other than the federal deficit that's propping up the overall economy, a broader slowdown may also be in the cards. So, the question today is not just whether home prices in Boston and San Francisco will fall by 30 percent over the next few years (though if you live there, that's enough to worry about), but whether the bursting of the housing bubble will deflate the rest of the economy."

--From the introduction of How to Profit from the Coming Real Estate Bust

You might be foreclosing on your future and not even know it!

In How to Profit from the Coming Real Estate Bust, you'll find out:
* How to tell if your home is wildly overvalued, and what to do about it (page 215)
* Why your property tax bill is probably too high, and how to lower it (page 239)
* How today's inflated real estate prices can make estate planning easier (page 235)

Millions of Americans have their children's college education and their retirement-- their future-- tied up in their homes. You might be one of them. When the housing bubble pops, it will vaporize billions of dollars of hard-earned savings just as it wipes out plenty of easy money. Two of America's biggest public corporations might default. The stakes are high. Learn how to protect yourself-- and even profit-- from the coming crash.