Great article Ken. Thank you for this useful insight. Your article addresses a key question for real estate investors who are anxiously monitoring the pulse of the US real estate market. The world has gone global and so when when one state sneezes many others catch a cold. The St Lucia real estate market, no doubt, like so many others has been negatively impacted by the US housing crisis. So with bated breathe and eyes, real estate investors have been watching and waiting for some sign of long-term recovery in the US property market. Your article provides useful indicators. Personally monitoring and evaluating factors like employment, manufacturing, mortgage rates and bank performance, consumer spending and other indicators becomes particularly important in real estate markets like St Lucia where one does not have the convenience of relying on the regular release of industry reports or indices. Real estate investors therefore have to position themselves to be able to consistently monitor real estate market trends and economic developments in order to accurately predict the recovery of the St Lucia real estate market.

No system is "perfect". It would be a lot worse if it wasnt capitolism.

You only lose your money if you were able to receive financing and then backed out. You need to look at a copy of your sales contract and make sure it stated your offer was contingent upon financing. You need to have your lender give you a turn down letter and go to the managing broker to get your money back. It sounds like your realtor is not being ethical.

Flipping may never make sense again in the forseeable future – like at least the rest of the decade
unless you an find a property priced WAY under market value and there is actually soem buying demand in hat area

It was only working thru 2006 because house prices were rapidly rising and demand was high for houses, usually guaranteeing a quick sale turnaround – Since then prices are down and still not really going up – we will be lucky to see historic 3-4% per year increases from now on, once prices actually start going back up – which might not be until 2013

NOW – house prices are headed down again for the 2nd time since 2006 and will be very slow to recover in the future – you are not going to see 10-20% a yr price increases again – at least not this decade and demand is so low, it is taking 6-12 months to sell houses – YOU would have to pay mortgage payments for every month you can't sell – eating into or destroying any potential profit you were expecting to make

Some foremost developers based in the region say it is becoming more and more complicated for them to sell flats at launch stage due to lack of interest from speculators. This reflects on the inherent demand structure in the real estate market.]]>