Real estate makes its move on stocks

Ultra-wealthy people in Naples are finding that their money may be working better for them in real estate than in the stock market.

That's one conclusion from Bill Earls. Real Trends, in an independent analysis for the Wall Street Journal, recently recognized Earls and his teammate Larry Lapin as the 15th most productive real estate sales team in the nation for 2011.

The Naples-based team, affiliated with John R. Wood Realtors, helped sell more than $141 million worth of residential real estate last year. Many of those sales were high-end homes in the Naples area.

“What happened is people really got tired of keeping their money in securities,” says Earls. “The real estate market had sound basics.”

By contrast, this year will be slower because of the uncertain business climate and the fact that there's less inventory at the upper-end of the market, Earls forecasts. “Political and regulatory uncertainty is what's keeping the lid on this market,” he says.

On the plus side, speculators are no longer bidding home prices up like they did during the boom. “That portends a healthy market in the next decade,” Earls says.