When it comes to making money in real estate, nothing beats good timing.

When you buy or sell a home, anything you can do to improve your timing is like money in the bank. Yes, timing is everything. In all aspects of life, especially real estate, this is a simple and obvious truth.

Timing the Real Estate Market offers you a revolutionary approach to making money in real estate, one that focuses on fast growth of capital and low risk. Based on 30-years experience as a real estate broker and investor, and a keen interest in finding ways to stay ahead of market trends, Robert Campbell has developed a logical, market-proven, and clearly-defined approach – The Campbell Method – that shows you how to anticipate residential real estate trends so that you can make intelligent and informed decisions about when to buy and sell.

The Campbell Method asks you to look at the market objectively, not emotionally. It requires that you step away from your own personal beliefs, opinions and biases about what you would like the market to do, and focus instead on what the market is telling you to do. Here is what The Campbell Method will help you identify to capture the greatest real estate profits:

• Five key Vital Sign indicators that track the trend of the real estate market.



• Three Market Truths that teach you to respect what the market is telling you to do.



• Ten Cardinal Rules that tell you what to do and when to do it.

Whether you are a homeowner or an investor, a savvy veteran or someone who is just starting out in real estate, using The Campbell Method to buy and sell will give you a tremendous advantage over those who play the guessing game.

• Your awareness of what is happening in the real estate market will vastly expand.



• You will see trends more clearly. It will become easier to anticipate the future direction of the market.



• You will be more relaxed and confident – and less nervous and uncertain – when
  it comes to making important decisions that can cost you money if you are wrong. Because you will be plugged into the flow of the market, you will know when to take action and when to sit tight.



• You will make more money in real estate. It will become easier to break away from buying and selling habits that may have yielded only limited success in the past.

The Law of Real Estate Markets

Everyone knows there is a natural, irrefutable law to all markets: prices rise and prices fall. Real estate is no exception. The pendulum swings back and forth from good markets to bad markets, building wealth and then tearing it down.

Even though estimates vary widely from one geographic region to another, on a national basis, the prevailing economic view seems to be that home prices rise an average of 40-60% during the market uptrends and then fall an average of 20-30% during the downtrends. In other words, two steps forward and one step back. In Southern California, where the market research for this book was conducted, these price swings have been even more extreme.

With such dramatic price movement in home values, it is no surprise that the trends can make you rich from real estate ownership; however, the same trends can also make you poor. While risk and reward are always present in the marketplace, it is important to learn how to stack the odds decidedly in your favor.

It’s Not What You Do . . . But When You Do It

Have you ever tried to grow crops in the wintertime? You have to spend days or weeks preparing the soil, use special fertilizers to stimulate growth, and then find ways to protect the seedlings from the elements. Even after all this hard work, the crops still struggle to survive . . . and most die.

On the other hand, if you wait until springtime to grow crops, it is a totally different story. All you have to do it take handfuls of seeds and toss them on the ground, and without doing much of anything . . . Presto! They grow like crazy.

Then, during the summertime, the crops become fully grown and your efforts produce the highest possible yield. This is when it is time to harvest and collect the full benefits of your labors. However, if you wait too long to harvest, the crops will start to wither, and then eventually die. In other words, the greater the delay, the greater the risk of loss.

This good timing, bad timing principle works exactly the same way in real estate.

When you buy real estate at the right time – when prices are at a market cycle low – and sell real estate at the right time – when prices are at a market cycle high – you can make optimal returns with minimal risk.

The lesson is simple: whether you are growing crops for the greatest yield, or buying and selling real estate for the greatest profits, there is a time to sow and a time to reap.

The Coming Economic Upheavals:
When to Buy

While some forecasters believe the future is bright, and others believe another depression is right around the corner, no one has a crystal ball that can see into the future.

Whatever your personal viewpoint about what lies ahead – whether you are an optimist or a pessimist – one thing is certain: change is unavoidable. Cycles of boom and bust are as predictable as the changing seasons and the tides. While the course of mankind is ever upward, there will always be major setbacks – and major real estate downturns – along the way.

History does repeat. If you live to be 75 years old and regardless where you live in the United States, chances are good that you will experience one serious recession every ten years, and one economic depression at some point in your lifetime. While “New Era” promises of lasting prosperity come and go, there is no reason to expect that this reoccurring pattern will not continue.

What is ironic, however, is that while the long-term trend of real estate prices continues to ratchet higher, it is the market downturns that ultimately offer you the greatest opportunity to profit. In fact, when you buy at a market cycle bottom (just before the market turns up again), this will likely be the easiest money you will ever make in real estate. This is because there are always plenty of screaming bargains available from highly motivated and even desperate sellers, who unfortunately find themselves in trouble.

The Campbell Method teaches you how to pinpoint when the market has hit bottom and is ready to climb higher, so that you can take advantage of these tremendous real estate bargains.

When to Sell

Mistakenly, most people believe real estate is always a safe investment. Although you can make spectacular profits with low risk during rising markets, nothing goes up forever. Sooner or later rising markets turn into falling markets. When this happens, when real estate values go into major decline (even if its not as bad as the 1929 crash), some or all of your profits can be quickly wiped out in what seems like the blink of an eye.

To protect your real estate profits, you have to know when to sell.

In fact, knowing when to sell is even more important than knowing when to buy. Why? Because the loss of real profits always takes priority over missing out on potential profits. After all, there will always be new real estate trends to catch. But if you lose your money because of bad timing, you may not be in position to grab the brass ring when the next market cycle hits bottom again.

If you invest in real estate wisely – knowing that when to sell is key – your alertness can protect you from problems that may seriously hurt or break others. It is easy to see how “selling high” also puts you in the ideal cash position to “buy low” after prices fall.

Whether the future holds good times or bad times for the real estate market, The Campbell Method prepares you for both.

Timing the Market for Maximum Profits

While housing markets vary greatly by region, historically, real estate trends tend to last about three to five years on the upside and three to five years on the downside. To really profit during the good markets and, more importantly, protect your profits from the bad markets, you must be able to anticipate these trend reversals. To do this, you have to look deeper into market events than what is reported on headline news or what is held true by mass thinking. These approaches put you behind the curve, not ahead of it.

So, how can you anticipate when these trend changes are coming? How can you tell when the market will boom . . . and when it will crash?

The Campbell Method for timing the real estate market shows you how to track the trend of the market by using five key real estate indicators called “Vital Signs.” These market bell weathers are “leading indicators” to what is on the horizon for real estate prices and will give you a three to six month “window into the future.” This early warning detection system gives you the strategic advantage of being able to buy and sell before mass crowd psychology starts to move real estate prices higher or lower in a significant way.

What the Vital Sign Indicators Tell You

The Vital Sign indicators directly measure supply and demand pressures that are building in the real estate market. By letting the market disclose what it is going to do next, you can rely on these indicators to tell you:

• When home prices are approaching a market peak.



• When home prices are approaching a market bottom.



• When home prices are in market uptrends or downtrends.

Clearly, the better you can anticipate real estate trends, the more likely you are to profit. Wayne Gretzky, the greatest hockey player to ever play the game, put it this way:

“Go where the puck is headed, not where it is.”

Knowing how to use the information that these Vital Sign indicators provide can produce staggering results. Imagine the profits you could achieve if you were able to anticipate the “high” and “low” points of the real estate cycle three to six months ahead of the general public? It would be like winning the lottery!

Why ride the market cycle up and then ride it back down? The key is to buy at the bottom and sell at the top. If you like roller coaster rides, go to the amusement park.

Big Mistakes in Real Estate and How to Avoid Them

Buying near market cycle bottoms can make you rich and buying near market cycle peaks can make you poor. The reason for this is simple: if you buy a home at a highly inflated price, you stand to lose much more than you make. Remember, since there is no protective moat built around real estate values, what may appear to be the American Dream can quickly turn into a nightmare if you are not careful. Home prices – especially in California and other high priced housing markets – can drop up to 30% or more during market declines.

When you buy at a market peak, a $250,000 home will drop in value to $175,000 during a 30% market decline. This means the same home would have to appreciate by a whopping 43% just to break even. Even though home prices have steadily risen since the 1950’s, waiting years and years to “get even” is hardly a good way to make money in real estate or get ahead in life.

The risk of “buying high” at market peaks becomes even more perilous when you consider how downturns in the economy closely parallel downturns in the real estate market. For better or worse, 15-20% of the economy is directly linked to the health of the real estate business. It is called the “wealth effect.” Therefore, if you “buy high,” it is likely you will be over-burdened with a big mortgage (debt) on a home that is sinking in value. Then, as the economy unravels – this is especially true if you lose your job, your savings, or your home – the negative effects on you and your family can be devastating.

Maximum Profits with Minimum Risk

The Campbell Method for timing the real estate market shows you a safe and rewarding way to buy and sell real estate. Using market insights generated by the Vital Sign calculations, you will know to buy before the market starts to move up . . . and to sell before the market starts to move down.

Simply put, as the Vital Sign indicators go . . . so goes the real estate market.

Realize this: real estate trends never end. Sooner or later -- good or bad – these trends only change direction. If you stay alert and prepare yourself for these approaching trend changes, you can place yourself in the extreme minority of people who will prosper from whatever direction the real estate market (and the economy) moves.

The Campbell Method is not a gimmick or a get-rich-overnight scheme. It is a fresh new approach to buying and selling real estate that shows you how to maximize profits and minimize risk by intelligently moving money into and out of the market, not by whim, but by careful, well thought out analysis of trends. When you master the market timing skills presented in this book, your success in real estate will be secure.

There is an old saying in the markets: “Nobody rings a bell when the market peaks or hits bottom.” But contrary to common belief, when you apply The Campbell Method for Timing the Real Estate Market, that bell can ring for you.