“We had a great bull run last year,” Ade, a 60-year-old geologist, said in an interview today. “I don’t know if the bull is dead, but it certainly is lame right now.”
This year may be the tail-end of attractive investments in property before interest rates rise, said Ade, who has made his money finding oil companies and private investors to fund the drilling of wells. He said he is trying to purchase residential real estate in Miami right now.
“The really good real estate deals are getting harder and harder to find,” Ade said. “Once interest rates start to go up, whether it’s farmland or single-family dwellings there’s going to be huge downward pressure on real estate.”
Foreign Buyers
The Manhattan high-rise condominium buildings One57 and 432 Park Ave., where units have gone under contract for more than $90 million, are evidence of the faith that the very wealthy have in real estate, said Mitchell Roschelle, real estate advisory leader at PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP. Such properties have also attracted international buyers.
Wealthy foreigners have bought high-end U.S. properties for their safety and because they’re denominated in dollars, the world’s reserve currency, he said. This helps domestic millionaires maintain the value of their property investments.
“It creates competition, which drives the price up for everybody,” he said. “The sellers have multiple channels to sell into. That gives you more liquidity.”
Self-storage properties are among commercial real estate investments wealthy individuals are buying, Kaminsky of Morgan Stanley said. Retail shopping centers are seen as less attractive as more consumers shop online through companies such as Amazon.com Inc., he said.
Chilean Fund
Morgan Stanley Wealth Management surveyed 1,004 U.S. investors ages 25 to 75, with least $100,000 in assets, during the fourth quarter of last year. A third of them had more than $1 million.