DEMYSTIFYING REAL ESTATE MYTHS

Buying or selling a property is one of the biggest financial decisions you’ll make in your life, which makes misinformation or bad advice dangerous. If you’ve ever bought or sold a real estate property whether a land or building, and turned to the Internet for direction, you know there is a lot of information twirling around. Then again how much of it is good advice, and how much of it is urban legend? We’re here to set the record straight. Here are the most common real estate myths we hear on the job, demystified.

Myth 1: Agents just want to make a sale.

While our ultimate goal is to help you buy or sell a property, we’re about more than making a commission or make a sale. In fact, at Graceview Homes & Properties, we think of ourselves more as guides than salespeople. That’s because we’re in it for the long haul, from the first time you contact us to the moment you’re handed ownership documents to your new property. We love it when clients become friends or when we can stay in touch. At the end of the day, we’re people helping other people make a well-informed, life-changing decision.

Myth 2: Online resources can do it all.

Online sites can provide abundant information on how to go about real estate transactions, but they should never be used to replace the advice of a knowledgeable professional. After all, these lawyers and surveyors couldn’t have spent all those years polishing their skills and knowledge, and you’d think that an hour Google search would be enough to replace them.

Myth 3: If you see a house online, that means it’s available.

Many major online real estate sites are aggregator sites, meaning they are gathering as many listings as possible. However, these sites aren’t always the most up to date, depending on how often they refresh their data. In addition, some of these sites don’t always delete a listing once it has been sold, meaning they have many “off-market” listings—houses that are not actively for sale.

Myth 3: If you’ve bought or sold a property before, you’ll be a pro your second time around.

Unfortunately, buying or selling a property isn’t like riding a bike. Well, it is—if you hop back on the bike and realize everything about riding a bike is now totally different. The buying and selling process changes over time, and the market is constantly fluctuating. These new processes and market conditions can lead to a totally different buying or selling experience than the one you had in your last real estate transaction. You may feel like a first time buyer (or seller) all over again, especially if it’s been awhile since the last time you went through the process.

Myth 4: Land Doesn’t Produce Income

Sometimes you’ll hear that land is a dumb investment because it doesn’t make money or generate any cash flow. This statement makes about as much sense as someone who says, “Houses are a dumb investment because they don’t make any money.”

Obviously, it’s not true.

A house isn’t going to automatically make money simply because it’s a house. It’s going to make money if YOU, as the investor, take the right actions to make it a cash-flowing asset.

Likewise, vacant land can make A LOT of cash flow, and it’s actually far less of a pain than any other type of real estate BECAUSE it’s vacant, nobody is living on it, and it behaves itself. There are no repairs to make, no toilets to unclog, and no tenants calling you at 3 am.

Myth 5: Wealth is a Requirement

There is no iota of truth in this statement. The fact is that you don’t need to have all the billions before you can afford to invest in real estate. When people imagine the average real estate investors, they think of billionaires and wealthy corporations purchasing thousands of acres of land. This is actually only a very small part of the real estate market. Many smaller investments are made every day by firms that represent groups of individual investors with good payments plan spread for your convenience. All you have to do is approach a real estate company and Inquire of their real estate investment plans. Like in Graceview Homes and Properties Ltd, our payment plan runs between three – twenty four months.

Myth 6: Buying Land at a cheap cost is all that matters

The human nature is naturally designed to gravitate towards cheaper objects as against the expensive objects and land is no exception. The idea that when buying land, the only thing that matters is its affordability is one of the popular land investment myths in Nigeria. In the real estate sector, it is possible to buy land that costs you a lot of money yet comes with the possibility of giving you high returns on your investment. This can be achieved via eventually getting top-notch tenants or having low maintenance cost on the land and property when it is eventually constructed.

It is, however, possible to buy land at a cheap price and the land is extremely slow in yielding returns or is expensive to maintain. These are realities you must understand especially dealing with the myth that cheap land is always a good investment. The truth is cheap land which is expensive to maintain or fails to yield returns on investment is not worth a good buy.  Investing in the real estate sector is interesting and rewarding. You can start small and grow your investments with time.

Conclusion;

Don’t let conflicting information lead you astray in your property search or sale. Almost always, it pays (sometimes literally) to go straight to the expert source by contacting a registered and certified real estate developer like Graceview Homes & Properties Limited.

If you’re looking for a way to invest in the real estate, schedule a talk with us and we would be happy to help.