For me the property location is far more important than the extra 1,2 or 3% return that I might get. The quality locations tend to have lower returns but the neighborhoods seem to be better with less people type problems. I've done some reading on countries that went thru a financial collapse and there seems to be a general theme that high quality real estate also got hit but not nearly as bad as the lower end stuff. To some extent that's true in our economy today... some lower quality real estate is down as much as 70%. The typical stuff I look at is off less than 10% from the peak... Hard to find a good deal :-)
Some of the areas that got hit so hard are seeing really strong price gains right now... If you have the intestinal fortitude for it now may be a good time to get that lower end stuff. There is a neighborhood in Florida that I am aware of where prices were around $220,000 at the peak and now you can buy all you want for $60,000... It's actually possible to think about doubling your money in that stuff. But I would not like to own it longer term... Too many issues... It's not even safe to drive through some of these neighborhoods.
Anyway... Good luck however you go about it... I think it's good time to buy... I hope I'm not wrong.
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