Is investing in your first property during a pandemic a bad idea? Experts disagree.

Most people — including you, might have been asking themselves the same question as they have been seeing property developers and agents posting pictures and advertisements of condos, and house and lot at encouraging low mortgage rates and down payment on social media. But with the pandemic telling us to be mindful of our spending, it’s easy to feel guilty. After all, taking advantage of a crisis to start a property investment might sound opportunistic and impulsive.

Although investing may be a personal decision, it can do a massive impact on a huge number of people, and can really help to increase demand in the economy which might result for companies to hire more workers, provide higher income, hence, keep the economy from collapsing.

Business strategists and financial experts believe that if you have the money to invest and are financially capable of paying monthly expenses, now is a perfect time to invest in real estate.

According to MoneySense, investing in real estate has a ton of benefits — it’s more resilient, can produce greater and fast cash flow than the stock market, can effortlessly give your return on investment (ROI) faster, and tax-efficient for a single investor. But before you go ahead and put your money on the first affordable house or condo you see on Facebook or other platforms, always put in mind that not all real estate is always a good investment. You have to consider the location, layout and scale, and how it’s going to support the kind of life you dream to live in the next 15 years.

According to Douglas Abbey, an educator on real estate at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, the first rule to consider in obtaining a property is assuring that it has a “forever time horizon”. This means that the property will surely endure because it’s strategically located.

An Indian English-language business newspaper called Financial Express claimed that the reasons why pandemic may be a good time to own a property include: “supply side factors positively influencing the market” — they said that today’s crisis impact is better in terms of  the economic health and financial position of the residential real estate market, compared to past events when the world has faced a crisis of such severity, like the dotcom crash, or the oil crisis, or the global financial crisis (GFC) of 2008.

Another convincing reason according to them is that the “home loan interest rates at record low”.

In relation to an article released by Inquirer, the usual 30-year mortgage rates hit a record low this pandemic, according to a Freddie Mac survey released on Thursday, October 15, providing a bright spot and another opportunity in the economy by continuously giving consumers more incentive to buy a home.

“The average for a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage dropped to 2.81% from 2.87% with an average 0.6 point,” said in the article.

In an article written by Scott McGillivray, a Canadian entrepreneur, investor, TV host, author, and educator, he said that house prices are holding steady and financing costs are low, which is an almost unheard-of situation.

“The way I see it, this is a gift from the real estate gods,” he said.

He also said that there are other facets that you need to consider upon investing in real estate, like “checking your ambition”, where he explained in his article to no get overly ambitious and impulsive during the pandemic.

“While I believe that now is most definitely a good time to invest in real estate… Try to acquire a single property and make sure that it’s closed, it’s established and you’ve got cash flow before taking on any other investment.”

Based on the aforementioned reasons, it seems as though it’s a perfect time to buy yourself a property, just make sure you are financially prepared for all the potential expenses that might come to avoid further stress and being cash-strapped.