Santa Fe New Mexico Real Estate

Investment Properties

Buy single family, affordable homes..........at the right time.

And rent them out. The type of Santa Fe New Mexico real estate that I invested in for my retirement, in addition to stock portfolios and mutual funds (won't do that again) was affordable, single family homes. If your interested enough to be reading this you probably know all this stuff already.

     A few of these properties, even one, can give relatively safe returns for average people without a lot of cash or commercial real estate knowledge. The return comes from Appreciation plus Rent Income plus depreciation and other deductions from Ordinary Income Tax that any tax preparer can calculate. 

    I don't believe in the "No Money Down" craziness. I read all those books and tried doing it for several years. Besides being almost impossible, is extremely risky. 

     The best return on Santa Fe New Mexico real estate I ever got was from buying discounted New Mexico real estate contracts. But everyone has caught on to that including big corporations like General Motors and Chrysler who solicit everyone listed at escrow companies. 

     But the single family homes I own for rentals are fantastic. They are like a growth stock (appreciation), that throws off a dividend. It can be a relatively low risk and a great way to diversify from stocks. And you can use the banks money.

Real estate lenders usually won't go over 70% loan to value for non-owner occupied real estate in Santa Fe like Santa Fe homes, but it's risky for you to go over that anyways. 

Affordable Santa Fe New Mexico real estate, like single family homes, has roughly doubled in value every ten years since I've been keeping track. But all the appreciation, or most of it, comes in about three years of each ten years cycle. So you must own the property during that time or you will have missed all your appreciation for ten years. The only way you can eliminate that risk is to hold the real estate for at least ten years. The same way you reduce the risk in stocks by holding for a long time. 

I have seen parts of three ten years cycles in Santa Fe real estate and I think I'm seeing the beginning of the fourth. In addition to appreciation cycles, Santa Fe New Mexico real estate will have short downturns. I've never seen one last more that a year of actual decline, but that has been followed by several years, five or six, of slow appreciation, followed by tremendous appreciation for about three or four years.

I bought "affordable" single family homes in a middle class, residential area of Santa Fe. Three bedrooms, two baths, garage, fireplace, on it's own lot. That specific kind of home has the highest demand in the country and Santa Fe New Mexico real estate is not exception. Every middle class family wants to own or rent that kind of property.

For example, I bought a home like that around 1989 for about $70,000. Had a 80% loan on it. Today it's worth about $210,000 (needs fixing up) and it's rented out to a scientist from Los Alamos for $1,250 a month. 

Jim Ratchford

Broker

The most efficient way to find good investment properties is to have a "Buyer's Agent" working for you. If you have a written agreement, the agent can have fiduciary (or not) responsibility to you, even though the seller is paying them. You can read these forms on line.

For more information click on "Buyers Representation", or e-mail your criteria for investment property by clicking on "CONTACT US"  or call:  

(505)  988-4100

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