Real estate investors bailing out?

CNN reports:

Recent economic data may point to a cooling housing market and some investors are already dashing for the exits, according to a news report published Wednesday.

Speaking with real estate brokers and analysts from such hot real estate markets as Las Vegas, Miami and Washington, D.C., The Wall Street Journal reported that fewer people are buying property as an investment vehicle.

A researcher at Arizona State University told the paper that in the hot market of Phoenix, as many as 30 percent of the properties for sale on the market right now are owned by investors, while Sandra Geary, a real estate broker in Sonoma County in California said that her sales to investors have dipped by over 75 percent.

Speculators don't have be long real estate.With higher mortgage rates coming, speculating will become less profitable.