These bargains may be coming again

1 Turner Drive has closed, $2.708 on a $2.7 million ask. A previous owner paid $2.195 for it in 2007 — you remember the boom years, don’t you? — then ran into trouble with their lender and ended up selling it to these owners for $1.230 million in 2011. Certainly, work has been done to it since, work that included a new kitchen, but when you start low enough, there’s room to sink money into a house and make out nicely upon resale.

I did very well for my clients in the 2008-2020 bust years, helping them find and pick off bargain properties. That’s been impossible since the market took off in 2021 — when the listing agent has stacks of contracts by the door on the first broker tour day, with instructions to return them in 2 days with a full 10% deposit, negotiating room is er, “limited”.

Inflation notwithstanding, I believe we’ll start seeing distressed properties resurface by 2023 or 2024, because some of today’s buyers must be stretching to “win” their bidding war, and won’t have the resources to outlast a severe economic downtown. Mind you, my family has called me “Eeyore” forever, so feel free to dismiss this gloomy prognostication.