BUSINESSSurreal estate: To buy or not to buyIs a real estate "bubble" about to burst, taking property values down with it? Bubble or no, experts advise not making any hasty decisions about your home, office or investments.By Katherine Vogt, amednews staff. Sept. 26, 2005. John Hurwitz, DO, an internist in San Jose, Calif., wants to buy medical offices near the city's O'Connor Hospital. Dr. Hurwitz, a solo physician, says he likely will try to form a partnership with other doctors to purchase offices large enough for his own practice as well as space to lease out to others. But he has some trepidation about buying new property at a time when there's a lot of talk about a potential real estate bubble, thanks to soaring housing prices. Home prices and sales have hit new highs, with the national median single-family home price reaching $217,900 in July, up 14.6% from a year earlier, according to the National Assn. of Realtors. But in some markets, $217,900 won't buy you a closet. In Dr. Hurwitz's San Jose, the local Dept. of Housing reports that the city's median single-family home price is $750,000. The experts are debating whether there indeed is a real-estate bubble, one that will burst like the dot-com stock boom of the late 1990s, sending property values spiraling. Some say the bubble soon will burst. Some say any bubble is confined to certain high-priced locations, such as most anywhere near a coastline. Some say there's no bubble at all. But while there's no consensus about whether physicians as homeowners should worry about their home values suddenly dropping, there is a consensus that any bubble will not necessarily apply to physicians who are investors in commercial real estate. In many markets, the value of office space is still recovering from its post-Internet boom, post-9/11 doldrums. [...]Full text of American Medical News content is available to AMA members and paid subscribers.
Copyright 2005 American Medical Association. All rights reserved.
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