Investing in real estate, ideally, is about opportunity. Opportunity to get involved in a myriad of markets, opportunity to earn passive income, to save for retirement, to find financial freedom. This idealized image of investing in real estate is alluring in a real American Dream kind of way, but the reality doesn’t always live up to the dream.

For a long time, investors felt the need to keep their eyes only on the hottest, trendiest markets. San Francisco. New York City. Chicago. DC. They have this glamorous appeal that few other places do, and it’s hard to break free from that particular allure.

But really, the greatest opportunities for most real estate investors aren’t in these markets. Slowly, the real estate investment landscape is shifting to favor secondary and even tertiary markets. They may not have the same glamorous appeal, but these diamonds on the rough offer more than their sparkling sister cities.

The economy is in recovery. We think we can say that fairly, especially in comparison to the state of things these past few years. That said, it hasn’t recovered. While we tend to zoom in on the real estate market, it’s conditions are closely tied to the overall economy — wages, job growth, and so on.

It’s true, jobs have been created. But one of the biggest issues facing working Americans — and those of us in real estate — is that of wage stagnation.

Even if we have more jobs, if those jobs aren’t paying enough or changing with inflation, it creates problems.

Welcome to the peak home buying season of the year! The first quarter of 2015 was sluggish in many real estate markets, Memphis included. The cold temperatures combined with lingering recession struggles and aftereffects of the market crash meant that things were slow to take off.  But now, it looks like Memphis real estate is in for an upturn.  One big reason...real estate investing!  As more and more are turning to renting a property rather than buying, the opportunity for real estate investors continues to grow.

Don’t get us wrong, the market wasn’t bad in the first quarter — homes were selling and home building was on the rise in Shelby County. There just wasn’t significant growth during the difficult months of February and March. By the same token, there wasn’t a decline in growth, either, which has lead to much optimism for the second quarter among real estate professionals.

Part of the job of any real estate investor is to pay attention to the state of the real estate market. More than reading news and keeping up with our professional connections, we need to look into the mind of the consumer. The consumer on all sides of a real estate transaction.  Demographics are important, particularly in a world where real estate investors are looking to draw in tenants and may need to draw in an end buyer.

Not only do we need to observe what makes our tenants tick, but how the face of the modern-day home buyer has changed.

As we head into 2015, there’s no shortage of people making real estate market predictions for the new year. As always, predictions, speculations and forecasts have to be taken with a grain of salt. We can’t rely on them entirely when it comes to decision making. Still, it’s good for those of us investing in real estate to look at where we’re going as much as where we’ve been. Professionals do study trends and their forecasts do come from a place of expertise.

It’s no secret that the real estate market and the job market are closely connected to one another. 

For instance, we know that the real estate market has been struggling due to a lack of first-time homebuyers — because the job market is making it difficult for them to have the resources necessary to purchase a home. Because of this reason, the housing market has remained more sluggish than it should in the midst of economic recovery.

In cities across the United States, particularly in large real estate markets, rent prices have been skyrocketing.  We have seen rent increases in many areas of Memphis as well as Dallas and Houston, although rents have not been rising like they have in some large cities across the country.  Many rents are also rising in multi-unit complexes which are seeking to add more and more attractive amenities, but are not shy about raising the rent at the same time.

While many markets are recovering from the recession (some slower than others), the demand for rental units — whether single-family properties or apartments — is still very, very high and shows no signs of slowing down. Whether its residual fear of foreclosure or shifts in our goals and needs in residence, renting is popular.

It seems like there are as many predictions about the recovery of the real estate market as there are stars in the sky. A quick Google search will lead you to opinion after opinion, tackling the issue from all angles. In fact, you’ll find glowingly optimistic predictions in one article and doom saying in another. For real estate investors, how do know who to trust when the same data is being interpreted in vastly different ways?

What if you choose to put your future in an opinion that turns out to be wrong? There’s a lot of risk there.

Everyone has something to say about the real estate market. That’s no surprise, considering local real estate markets vary and can’t really be used to gauge or predict the overall national market.  Watch the national news for five days in a row and you are likely to get five different stories on the real estate market with five different "revelations".  

You’ll hear a lot of conflicting information from plenty of people, and many of them are considered credible in their field and others just claim the mantle of credibility.  So how do you know which headlines to trust?  How do you know when the source of information is real or when, say a magazine, is carrying the water for their advertisers.  It can be very confusing to know where good advice can be found in today's real estate space.