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Hot Property: The real story on real estate
Business Week - By Peter Coy

April 27th, 2005: Let's say you fear housing prices are bound to fall but you still want to own. Is there any other way to protect yourself?

Here's one unorthodox idea I got in an email today from David Brady, an investment adviser in Chicago (Brady Investment Counsel LLC):

...the true financial geek looking to buy and hedge from a potential decline in prices may want buy the house today and short Countrywide Financial (CCR-$36), a mortgage lending leader. Or better yet, short a publicly traded bank with operating profits very concentrated in the ... mortgage lending and residential real estate markets [where you live]. If the residential real estate market continues to run, your RE investment works great but you lose it all on your short. If the RE market gets cracked, the short works and you lose on the RE.

Interesting, Mr. Brady, even though I see a couple of problems. The biggest one is that shorting stocks can be kind of expensive. It wouldn't be reasonable to keep a short position for years, which is how long it might take for a real estate bubble to burst. It's also not exactly a solution for everyone, since on a national basis the potential losses from real estate dwarf the potential gains from shorting mortgage lenders.

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